


To Good Use

by SteRhubarb



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Blood, Character Death, Fluff, Grief, Grief/Mourning, Hogwarts, M/M, MWPP, Major Character Injury, Marauders, Marauders era, OotP, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Second Wizarding War, Strangling, first wizarding war, good old banter, moony wormtail padfoot prongs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-05-16 22:23:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 30,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5843242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteRhubarb/pseuds/SteRhubarb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus almost flinches away – unused to having or witnessing Sirius give anything his unwavering attention – like looking directly at the sun and having the sun look straight back, he’s thinking, and then Sirius does <i>something</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Efficiently Allocated, 1980

**Author's Note:**

> Non-chronological chunks of Marauder goodness. Sirius/Remus centred and dialogue focused.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Of course, Sir. Order business is always-“
> 
> “No, Remus.” Dumbledore lowers his head so that he is eyeing Remus from over the rim of his spectacles, and shakes his head minutely. “Not like other Order business. Do you understand?”
> 
> “Professor?” Remus probes.
> 
> “You must keep this only to yourself,” Dumbledore says gently, but firmly. “No one else.” This time Remus hears it: Not Sirius. Not James. Not Peter.
> 
> “What do I have to do?”

 

Feb 1980

  
Remus has to abandon a night out with some of the other Order members the night he’s called for a meeting with Dumbledore.

  
He’s putting on his coat by the door when Sirius shouts him from the front room where four or five other Order members are already round and getting started on soaking their fear in alcohol and setting it alight before hitting the local pub.

  
They’ve only been at it half an hour or so but they took rather quickly to shouting obnoxiously over one another’s stories.

  
Remus glances down the hallway at Sirius, perched on the back of the sofa with a bottle of beer between his fingers.

  
‘ _Just have one?_ ’ he mouths temptingly and shakes the bottle in his hand, but Remus just smirks and shakes his head back.

  
Sensing a distraction, Frank Longbottom spins around on the sofa below Sirius and spots Remus down the hall.

  
“Oi, Lupin, squeeze in a quick one before you head off!"

  
Remus moves to stand in the doorway and waves a hand at all of the faces that turn to greet him. There are less of them than last time, and he knows it doesn't do to dwell on that sort of thing, but it's hard to ignore the fact that he might not get another chance to have a drink with half the people in this room ever again. And 'half' is being optimistic at this point.

  
He shakes his head to clear it, but also to decline. “I’d love to, but I’ll probably be late if I don’t leave now.”

  
He checks his watch and then lets his gaze flicker to Sirius, who is sitting still and far too quiet considering the argument they had that afternoon when Remus had broken the news that he wouldn’t be joining.

 

_  
“We were only briefed two days ago, what could he want to speak to you about?” Sirius had put down the burger halfway to his mouth to wonder aloud._

_  
“If I knew I wouldn’t be Flooing to Scotland in the night to find out, now, would I?” Remus replied coolly._

_  
“I thought Dumbledore was going to be away from Hogwarts this week?”_

_  
Remus squeezed his eyes shut momentarily against the start of a headache, and then returned to stirring his cup of tea. “Well, that’s where he asked to meet. He must have come back early.”_

_  
“Do you think it’s something urgent?”_

_  
“I would hope so, otherwise it would be rather cruel to call me out at such an odd time on a night that’s supposed to be relaxing.”_

_  
“Or convenient,” Sirius muttered, before finally taking a bite of his burger. Remus replaced his cup on the table with a pointed clatter._

_  
“What does that mean?”_

_  
Sirius shrugged, not wanting to start something he knew he hadn’t the energy to finish, but the look in Remus’ eye told him that he had unfortunately already started._

_  
“I’m not sure you ever really want to come out with us when we have these nights. I mean, I just can’t remember the last time you didn’t ditch out for something that was a meeting, or an appointment, or-“_

_  
“Or a full moon?” Remus snapped._

_  
“I wasn’t including those times; I know they can’t be helped. There always manages to be something_ else _stopping you.”_

_  
“You think I’m lying.” Sirius all but flinched at the tone in Remus’ voice._

_  
“No! That’s-“ Sirius growled, irritated by the downward spiral of the conversation. “Not_ lying _, just making excuses. But you don’t need to; you can just say you don’t feel like it instead of inventing a meeting with Dumbledore!”_

_  
Remus pushed his chair back from the table with a screech and stood up._

_  
“Dumbledore has asked me to meet him tonight to discuss Order business and, regrettably, that means I can’t join in your festivities. If that seems too odd to believe, you can feel free to invent _another story to tell everybody.”__

_  
With that, he stormed off. Sirius heard the front door slam, but he knew Remus would just be letting off steam in the garden._

_  
He pushed the rest of his lunch away and sighed into his hands._

_  
It took two hours for Remus to return to the house, but in a signature Marauder-sulk, he simply made several rounds of toast and some tea, and took it to his room._

_  
Sirius had to knock on his door with the excuse that he couldn’t locate the teabags to make a reconnect._

_  
Remus wordlessly stalked into the kitchen with Sirius at his heels and pulled them from the same battered old tin beside the bread-bin where they had been since they moved in._

_  
He pushed them a little hard into Sirius’ hands, but Sirius caught his eye and swore he spotted a flicker of amusement beneath the exasperation at the obvious gesture before he returned to his room._

  
 

  
“Well, you should come find us when you’re finished, Remus,” Dorcas tells him earnestly from where she sits cross legged on the floor behind the coffee table, and the others nod.

  
Sirius does too, very slowly, but he stares pointedly at the carpet as he does so.

  
“I’ll try to, if I can,” Remus nods back.

  
He’s ready to leave now before the tension between the two of them becomes noticeable to the others, but as they all smile warmly in farewell, Sirius is analysing the label on his beer bottle.

  
In frustration at this, Remus grabs the bottle and takes a large swig from it before thrusting it back into Sirius’ hands.

  
“Save me one just in case,” he adds smugly, as Sirius smirks up at him, a little baffled and appeased. 

  
And with that, Remus leaves.

  
 

 

*

  
  
Dumbledore is facing away from the door, in the shadows of the far end of his office, when Remus enters.

  
“Sir,” Remus greets him, moving further into the dim and crowded room. He manoeuvres around the tables of artefacts and stops in front of the desk, having never stepped foot beyond it in his life.

  
Dumbledore glances over his shoulder and nods his acknowledgement to Remus, an odd gesture coming from the grand and gracious man, then beckons him closer when he notices he's stood so far away.

  
Remus hesitates, but there’s an atmosphere of urgency unlike anything he was given the impression of when called to the meeting, and so he strides past the invisible line beside the desk that marks his youth without another thought.

  
“I’m afraid, Remus, that this is as pressing a matter as you have undoubtedly feared ever since I requested to talk with you so soon after our last meeting.” Remus’ stomach lurches. “I must ask you to do something I wished you would never have to do, and furthermore, I must ask that you go about this business clandestinely.”

  
“Of course, Sir. Order business is always-“

  
“No, Remus.” Dumbledore lowers his head so that he is eyeing Remus from over the rim of his spectacles, and shakes his head minutely. “Not like other Order business. Do you understand?”

  
“Professor?” Remus probes.

  
“You must keep this only to yourself,” Dumbledore says gently, but firmly. “ _No one_ else.” This time Remus hears it: _Not Sirius. Not James. Not Peter._

  
“What do I have to do?”

  
“You don’t _have_ to do anything, Remus. I am asking you, as a last resort, to do something frankly quite dangerous. You can refuse and I will think nothing less of you. However, the task has the potential to gain us a wealth of valuable intel that could further us in attempting to rid the world of this maniacal threat.”

  
Remus feels a pang of irritation midway through the speech. They both know he won’t say no; he can’t. Dumbledore probably banked on that.

  
“Why me?” he asks anyway.

  
“For starters, you are experienced and adept at fabricating a cover for yourself, which will be of utmost importance during this mission.”

  
It takes Remus a beat to realise what Dumbledore is referring to. “I’m good at lying,” he translates, and the hint of bitterness is hard to disguise in his own voice.

  
“I hope you are not offended, Remus. You’ve honed your ability to lie your way through situations out of necessity, and no wrongdoing of your own. You now have the chance to put that ability to great use.”

  
“Other than making up convincing stories, what do you think I can do better than any of the others?” he asks sincerely, because half of the Order are better duellists than Remus, they have more skilled Legilimens among them, and of course none of them are incapacitated for a week out of every month with-

  
And then the penny drops.

  
“Oh.”   
  
  
Dumbledore frowns, almost regretfully, and reaches out to touch Remus’ arm.

 

 

 


	2. Redemption, 1994

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For an hour or so Padfoot pretended to sleep alongside Remus’ genuine effort, but kept snorting or licking his chops loudly and disturbing Remus just as he was about to drop off. 
> 
> It was barely 8am when Remus finally cracked his eyes open to the sunlight now pouring across the walls at the point just above his head, and sighed heavily down at Padfoot.

 

1994

Remus cast a quick _homenum revelio_ and waited while the smoke-like tendrils crept their way into every corner of the house, crawling up the stairs and groping to the back of every room before bouncing off the walls and rushing their way back to where he stood.

 

He braced for the gust of air that hit him; a signal that there was nobody else in the house, and then let out a breath of relief.

 

He was too exhausted to turf out any squatters or fight off any intruders tonight.

 

It was a Thursday and they had been walking and sleeping rough after leaving Hogwarts a clouded Tuesday evening nine days earlier.

 

“It’s empty,” he told Sirius over his shoulder.

 

Sirius was toeing a lump of rotting wood in the corner that at some point in history had been a coffee table. He huffed an unimpressed laugh.

 

“Unsurprising. I suspect not even rats inhabit this dump. It is the very definition of a _shithole_ , Moony-“

 

“Yes, well, when you know of an inconspicuous mansion we can hideout in, do let the Order know that we call dibs, won’t you?” Remus grumbled, fingering the thick layer of dust on a nearby shelf which, he noticed upon glancing around the room properly, apparently covered every horizontal surface. “It just needs a good deal of cleaning charms and it’ll be decent enough for a day or two.”

 

Sirius snorted. “A shit-load, you mean.”

 

“Yes, alright, _a shitload of scouring charms_. Point is: it will do for a couple of days. Christ, since when have you been this put off by filth? I’ve seen you on numerous occasions roll in; dead animal; faeces, both your own and something else’s; and sleep rough inside a bin before.”

 

“I had a considerable amount of cardboard box between me and the bin at the time, though,” Sirius protested feebly. Remus pursed his lips.

 

 

 

***

Between the two of them it only took until half past three in the morning to make their way through what they found was once a rather well-decorated lounge, a spacious kitchen and dining area, and several reasonably sized bedrooms.

The decent bedroom closest to the stairs had a boggart beneath the bed which neither party could muster the energy to tackle after four hours of industrial-level house cleaning.

 

Sirius had fervently claimed the other before Remus had been given full chance to peruse the accommodation, leaving him to shuffle his way at around 4am, into the stuffy room at the back of the house.

 

The cramped space appeared to be a storage room into which a defunct old iron bed frame had been impressively inserted, and a stained mattress left to die alongside it, haphazardly draped on top.

 

The pointlessly tiny window had an unnecessarily large curtain opened to one side of it, which Remus tore down with one tug to use as a bed sheet.

 

And in the light of early dawn, with the songbirds warming their vocal chords on the skeleton branches outside his arrow-slit window, Remus went out like a light.

 

 

 

***

Padfoot woke him again at 6:30, scratching on the door. Fortunately, the size of the room meant Remus could reach across with eyes still closed and minimal stretching to tug the handle down.

The dog pushed it open unhurriedly with his flank and did a (very quick) lap of the room before carefully jumping up onto the bed and curling himself into the divot made where Remus’ knees didn’t quite reach up to his own chest.

 

Remus flopped an arm down over the hulking dog and dug his fingers into the softest fur at Padfoot’s underside.

 

For an hour or so Padfoot pretended to sleep alongside Remus’ genuine effort, but kept snorting or licking his chops loudly and disturbing Remus just as he was about to drop off.

 

It was barely 8am when Remus finally cracked his eyes open to the sunlight now pouring across the walls at the point just above his head, and sighed heavily down at Padfoot. The dog raised his head excitedly and yawned or smiled, baring all of his teeth.

 

Remus idly grasped the lower jaw in one hand and removed the other from beneath his head to hold onto the snout as well.

 

The dog sat still, eyeing Remus patiently as he peered curiously into Padfoot’s mouth, fingering the gums and letting the sharpest canines prick at his fleshy fingertips.

 

“You have a tooth missing,” Remus growled. He cleared his throat of morning phlegm. “Right here.”

 

He prodded the still ragged gum where a molar had been, prompting an involuntary flick of tongue onto his hand.

 

Padfoot snorted or sneezed his growing discomfort, and Remus released him gently, wiping the slobber from his hand onto the curtain-turned-bedsheet, before scratching at Padfoot’s ear.

 

 

***

 

He fell asleep again quickly, and reawoke almost another hour later, alone on the bed. His head ached from the hot sun on his face, and he found himself blind until he rolled out of the light and rubbed his eyes back into focus.

 

Glancing at the box that served as his bedside table, he noticed his wand gone from its spot, and rubbed at his eyes again. Still not there.

 

The door stood open, and the house stood silent.

 

“Sirius?” he called into the house, and before waiting another beat for a reply, sprang up from the mattress and out onto the long landing. He called again, louder, then tried shouting Padfoot instead.

 

He scrambled through the rooms on the same floor, noting how Sirius’ bed seemed unslept in, and then bounded down the stairs, trying to keep his breath steady despite himself. Every room on the ground floor was also empty, and Remus could feel a scream or a howl beginning to build in his throat.

 

That was when he noticed the door. It stood beside the pantry, almost entirely obscured by the pantry’s own door, which had swung open in reaction to Remus bursting through into the kitchen.

 

The mystery door was also open, just a crack, but as Remus approached, he began to hear a noise. A droning noise that didn’t begin to alter until he was in the door and ascending a dim, rotting, wooden staircase. He had slowed himself down, but his heart still raced in anticipation of what he would discover.

 

Remus could see, about six foot down, that the staircase turned at a ninety degree angle, where a small source of light was keeping the basement from being completely pitch black.

 

When he reached the turn, he took a deep breath before going any further, and held it as he stepped down the last three steps.

 

Sirius was stood with his back to Remus, naked but for a ragged pair of shorts he had brought with him from wherever, murmuring into the darkness of the room.

 

He held his hands up, and Remus could see his wand in Sirius’ right hand, throbbing a glow in time with Sirius’ mumbling.

 

A cold relief washed over Remus; he was here.

 

“Sirius?” Remus spoke quietly.

 

One of Sirius’ hands moved, the one with the wand in it, and Remus’ body considered flinching, but didn’t. He watched instead as Sirius moved it slightly to face another section of the room.

 

His muttering had stopped momentarily, Remus realised now, and commenced again after the shift.

 

Remus released the breath of fear, and felt himself flush in shame.

 

Sirius was making wards.

 

Just warding the house, which, in their desperation to clean out a space to sleep, they had forgotten to do the night before.

 

Remus stepped forward and whispered Sirius’ name over his shoulder whilst reaching out to cover Sirius’ hands with his own.

 

He slipped the wand out of Sirius’ grasp and then pulled their hands into his chest. Sirius’ skin was covered in goosebumps, and he began shivering as soon as he was wrapped in Remus’ arms, but sighed heavily and stop muttering.

 

Remus shushed him, despite his ceasing to make noise, and they rocked slightly on the spot as their heart rates slowed together.

 

“You needed somewhere to go when the full comes,” Sirius whispered, gazing down past where Remus had the wand pressed between them.

 

Remus released a breath against Sirius' tattooed shoulder.  
  
  
  
"I warded the rest of the house, too," Sirius added, and Remus lowered his head to rest against the shoulder, exhausted all of a sudden with the relief of it.

 

“Thank you.”

 


	3. Decline, 1979

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Irrelevant!” Sirius practically snapped, irritated by Remus’ constant nonchalance, particularly when it came to his well-being. “Something awful happened once, and something awful has happened again. That one doesn’t cancel this one out, just because the first one was relatively worse!”

 

 

 

1979

Out on the hospital front court, Sirius thinks about going to the pub, and then thinks about going to James and Lily’s, and then finds himself traipsing up the steps to his shitty third-floor flat in Camden with hardly any recollection of the journey home.

  
He doesn’t think he’d have been so careless as to have apparated, _but_ – he touches his back pocket and feels his wallet, still lodged in its hasty spot when earlier, trying to pay for a curry at the door, Frank Longbottom had appeared with a noise like a whipcrack on the stairs behind him and relayed the news that Remus had turned up out of nowhere in the reception of St. Mungo’s, with a chunk out of his shoulder.

  
  
He also hadn’t paid for a taxi, and yet, there he found himself.

  
  
He glances over his shoulder for shadows or eyes or anything, and then pushes the flat door open.

  
  
It’s empty, of course.

  
  
The smell of the cold curry greets him from its abandonment on the worn doormat, and Sirius snatches it up and carries it into the lounge.

  
  
He still thinks of it as a lounge even when it’s nothing more than a glorified closet with a battered corduroy couch and a skip-salvaged, dilapidated bookshelf literally forced into the small space.

  
  
He and Remus had spent an entire day from 8 in the morning to ten at night trying to wrangle it through the awkwardly small doorway after they’d acquired it - although ten of those hours saw it lodged in doorframe and abandoned for less strenuous or frustrating activities, before acknowledging that they couldn’t spend the rest of their time living there having to crawl through a dog-sized gap at floor level every time they wanted to enter the flat.

  
  
He drops down in the dead centre of the couch (deceivingly the only place where you aren’t in fear of being slowly and discreetly digested by the bastarding thing while you read the newspaper unawares), and tears open the polystyrene carton to begin eating his stone-cold lamb bhuna.

  
  
Sirius groans wearily as he realises he doesn’t have a fork and considers eating it with his hands for a moment, before remembering that there’s no Remus around to scold him from using lazy magic, and summons one using a quick _Accio_.

  
  
When he can’t stand the creaking of the fork on the polystyrene as he scrapes up the remainders of sauce, Sirius tosses it rebelliously onto the couch beside him – a move that would have had him punished by Remus, probably with some absurd ritual of carrying the carton right out to the main bin in the back alley – and rests his head back, closing his eyes.

  
  
It feels like only a minute or two passes, but when Sirius stirs and opens his eyes again, the dull afternoon has slipped away into evening, and the streetlight cuts its way in through the open curtains, illuminating the empty seat beside him where the spent curry carton had sat only hours before.

  
  
“Greedy bastard,” he mutters at the sofa as he pushes himself up.

 

 

 

 

 

  
***

  
  
“It’s not the worst we’ve had happen,” Remus had croaked with his face half-pressed into the hospital bed.  
  
  
  
A nurse had arrived a minute or two after Sirius to give Remus his daily tending, but Sirius was sure she could have chosen a better time than five minutes into Visiting Hours, because Remus was then forced to lie face-down with his head turned away, while the nurse applied a combination of ointments and charms to his ragged shoulder.  
  
  
  
Sirius grimaced from behind his hand but forced himself to look at it, and consoled himself with the sight of Remus shirtless.  
  
  
  
“Irrelevant!” Sirius practically snapped, irritated by Remus’ constant nonchalance, particularly when it came to his well-being. “Something awful happened once, and something awful has happened again. _That_ one doesn’t cancel _this_ one out, just because the first one was relatively worse!”  
  
  
  
“That’s not what I’m-!” Remus made to turn his head and discuss it face to face (the only true way to discuss anything with Sirius if you wanted him fully present in the conversation), but the nurse tutted and pinned him with the flat of her palm to his good shoulder.  
  
  
  
“ _Not_ what I mean,” he repeated through his teeth as the nurse dripped something incredibly painful into his wounds.  
  
  
  
“You’re doing it again. You’ve never had any self-worth. Remus, you could have been killed!”  
  
  
  
“I do have- Fuck! Ow!” Remus gripped the edge of the bed. A large dressing was suddenly being pressed firmly over his back.  
  
  
  
Sirius glowered at the nurse, who didn’t offer an apology.  
  
  
  
The gashes, he also noticed, started waist high at Remus’ spine and stretched up over his left shoulder blade, almost completely over his shoulder, but the dressing didn’t quite cover all of them.  
  
  
  
She’s going to have to put another one on, Sirius surmised.  
  
  


“I have self-worth, Sirius. I’m just putting it into perspective. I’m not going to dwell on it, so let’s just put it behind us now and get on with everything.”  
  
  
  
“First of all, let’s get this straight- Nurse, back me up here - you’re not moving with that shoulder for at least two weeks!” Sirius paused here to gaze wide-eyed and imploring up at the nurse, who eventually pursed her lips and nodded. “Exactly. And secondly, we’re not putting anything behind us until you tell me every detail of what happened. Saying ‘ _I was ambushed_ ’ is not an explanation, and honestly, at this point, I can only assume that you want me to think you’re withholding information!”  
  
  
  
Remus levelled Sirius with a piercing look.  
  
  
  
“I don’t think now is a good time to be talking about this, is all,” he replied, coolly, and turned his head away.  
  
  
  
Remus’ neck hurt from craning it, but the truth was that looking at Sirius when he made those sorts of accusations - as he did more and more frequently these days, and not always in jest - made Remus feel ill.  
  
  
  
It was true, they shouldn’t have be talking about it with the nurse there, but Sirius fumed at Remus’ shutting down on him. Again.  
  
  
  
He sat there until the nurse had finished, glaring at the crown of Remus’ head, the swirl of auburn and gold that made Sirius ache to reach out and run his fingers through it.  
  
  
  
Remus never looked at him or spoke during that time, and when they were finally left alone, he pushed up from the bed so that he was sat straddling the gurney and flexed his cramped hands.  
  
  
  
He still didn’t look directly at Sirius, who sat staring up and appreciating the still very much shirtless Remus, chewing at the inside of his cheek.  
  
  
  
“I don’t think you’re keeping information from me,” he conceded, and Remus finally met his gaze. “I mean, I do, in that you’re obviously trying to protect me or something. But I don’t think you’re, you know, a spy or anything.”  
  
  
  
Remus betrayed no emotion as he watched Sirius’ face carefully.  
  
  
  
_Did he believe him? Did Sirius believe himself when he said it?_  
  
  
  
Remus’ shoulder ached so deeply it made him want to sleep for a thousand years. He didn’t have the energy for opening up this subject. He never did.  
  
  
  
“Good to hear,” he simply offered, and swung his leg over the bed so as to jump down and grab his shirt.  
  
  
  
Sirius reached it at the same time and helped Remus into it. Once on, he reached around and began to button it up for him.  
  
  
  
“What are you afraid I’ll do in reaction to you telling me what happened?” Sirius asked quietly over Remus’ shoulder.  
  
  
  
Wasn't that the burning question? Was this not the question Remus had been having to consider every day since he had met Sirius? The reckless, passionate, unpredictable beauty of him, both awing and terrifying.  
  
  
  
Remus turned, breaking the circle of Sirius' arms around him and fixing him with a firm gaze.  
  
  
  
“Overreact. Kill someone. Get yourself killed in the process--” Remus took another shaky breath. “Get us _all_ killed in the process.”  
  
  
  
Sirius stepped back abruptly, and rubbed at his face.  
  
  
  
“You act like I’m some sort of _loose canon_ , who goes around-”  
  
  
  
“You _do_ act like that!”  
  
  
  
Sirius scoffed. “I wouldn’t put us in danger for- what are you thinking? Praise? A commendation?”  
  
  
  
Remus held his head and used all of his strength not to shout _revenge_ back at him. “I know you’d do it without thinking about any of those things.”  
  
  
  
“Oh, you know me so incredibly well, Remus!” Sirius spat.

  
  
Remus sniffed and swiped at his nose and realised that he was on the brink of tears.  
  
  
  
“I just want to protect you!" Sirius shouted then. "To protect you all, is that so much to ask?”  
  
  
  
Remus shook his head.  
  
  
  
“That’s what we’re _all_ trying to do. You can’t enforce it and then- you-” Remus barked a mirthless laugh. “You say I have no self worth, but you insist on 'protecting' me and then refuse to let me protect you in turn, and it’s _infuriating_ , Sirius. I’m trying to- to-”  
  
  
  
Somehow he knew that Sirius understood what he was attempting to say.  
  
  
  
“ _If_ you loved me," Sirius growled, "you’d tell me who did it."  
  
  
  
Remus frowned, fixed his gaze on a point past Sirius, and shook his head resolutely. “You’ll kill yourself over it."  
  
  
  
Sirius nodded grimly, and then he realised that he knew the answer already. It could only be one person, and now he just needed to hear it out loud.  
  
  
  
He sat himself back down on the plastic chair and put his head in his hands.  
  
  
  
He scratched at his scalp in an attempt to keep the image at bay of his own brother attacking Remus.  
  
  
  
_Did he have a Dark Mark? A mask? Did he smile as he did it? Did he know how much hurt it would cause to Sirius? Did he leave Remus alive for that sole purpose?_  
  
  
  
Sirius swiped at his eyes.  
  
  
  
“Does Dumbledore know?”  
  
  
  
Remus tried to gauge if Sirius meant that he should or shouldn’t.  
  
  
  
He shook his head slowly.

 


	4. Balm, 1975

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Moony…?” James begins carefully. “Moony, do you… _not_ like dogs?”
> 
> Absolutely baffling idea, James knows (everyone loves dogs), but a necessary question in light of the way Remus is practically climbing the walls to get away from it.

1975

He’s been promised a grand surprise, and when that had barely stirred him a chocolate bar, also.

 

Remus dubiously followed the excited galloping of James and Peter up the tower staircase and through the common room, convinced that a prank lay at the end.

 

It wasn’t unusual for a Marauder to trial a particularly complex prank on one of his fellow comrades, just to work out the logistics, and so it had come that they would let themselves be blindly led anywhere with almost zero hesitation, and a resignation that pain and/or humiliation was inevitably somewhere around a corner.

 

Thus, Remus found himself compliantly entering his very own dormitory with a faint hope of at least not getting his socks wet. He’d torn a hole in all but the pair he was currently wearing, and daren’t write to his parents or spend any of his Hogsmeade money on new ones.

 

Within several seconds of entering the room behind James and Peter, Remus is hurriedly stepping back again and his heels clatter against the skirting board.

 

“Oh my God, where did you find it? Did you steal this from someone?”

 

James’ initial beam of joy falters and he frowns at the way Remus flattens himself against the wall.

 

There is a dog in the dormitory.

 

He is very large, very black, and also apparently _very_ excited that Remus is here.

 

“No, he’s all ours, so you can chill out, Moony. He’s not got rabies!” James pauses, and then chuckles. “Well, actually, he _might_ –“

 

Remus yelps -and if only Sirius was here to hear him- as a dog snaps his jaws toward James’ hand, just once, and though it seems innocent enough, it immediately turns its attention back to Remus and begins trying to put its head under his hand.

 

Remus, James notices, is having none of it.

 

“Moony…?” James begins carefully. “Moony, do you… _not_ like dogs?”

 

Absolutely baffling idea, James knows ( _everyone loves dogs_ ), but a necessary question in light of the way Remus is practically climbing the walls to get away from it.

 

Remus lowers his eyes from the ceiling (or the heavens) to gaze incredulously over at James, and then gulps down at the dog, who is now drooling on his shoe.

 

“Owhhh!” Peter grumbles, disappointedly.

 

“I’m not sure how it escaped your knowledge, but I did get- well, _mauled_ , at the age of five, _by a canine_ , so,” he bites out, pressing his head back against the wall.

 

Mid way through speaking it had planted it’s paws on Remus’ stomach and is now beginning to stand up on its hind legs, apparently set on licking some face.

 

“No!” Remus blurts out. “I’m afraid I do not like it!” he adds, where he was going to let the obvious go unsaid, but feels it actually needs voicing aloud now that nobody is making a move to remedy the situation and remove the mutt, who seems absolutely intent on covering Remus head to toe in saliva.

 

 _Probably making it easier to digest me_ , Remus thinks glumly.

 

At this declaration, however, the mutt makes a sort of disgruntled scoffing noise, and when Remus lowers his eyes a fraction from the ceiling, he is met with a pair of rather sad looking eyes.

 

The dog drops from where it is propped up on Remus and slumps to the floor at his feet.

 

“Well, that’s hurt his feelings,” James comments. “He’ll be in a sulk for bloody days now!”

 

***

 

The porcelain of the sink bites into Remus’ hip as he leans in to look at himself in the mirror.

 

There is still some dog slobber on his jaw, which he grimaces at when he swipes at it with a wet cloth.

 

He is trying valiantly not to mutter “oh my god” repeatedly as he goes through several rounds of washing his face, mainly because Sirius is stood in the bathroom doorway watching.

 

Sirius is sulking, his arms crossed over his chest, and he’s trying to airily ignore Remus, but by being present in the very room Remus has escaped to is a little telling of how he really feels.

 

Remus keeps flicking his eyes to watch Sirius in the mirror, has met his gaze at least four times now, so sighs loudly and decides seven washes is probably enough before he starts to take the skin off his nose.

 

“I can’t believe you thought a dog, of all things, would go down the best with me,” Remus comments, shaking his head as he turns to Sirius.

 

Sirius throws his arms out in a huff.

 

“Man’s best friend, loyal, not to mention soft, and hilarious, and adorable, and I was hard pressed to find an animal more in tune with those elements of my personality!”

 

“Yes, I’d have rated ‘soft’ high on the list of necessary attributes, as well,” Remus teases.

 

Sirius pouts to suppress his laughter, then places his hands on Remus’ shoulders and steadies a sincere smile at him.

 

“I’m not your run-of-the-mill dog, Moony. You’ll love him. Me.”

 

Remus chews the inside of his lip, and after a moment he concedes and gives a nod.

 

“Please just tell me you won’t bark as a dog, as much as you talk shit as a person?”

 

James and Peter jump as Remus speeds through the dormitory, yelping, only to be taken down by a well aimed pillow to the back.

 


	5. Contribute, 1981

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius felt a sharp slap across his face.
> 
> “Get up!” Hands were on him, dragging him up from the dirt. “Get the fucking fuck up, Sirius!”

April 1981

Sirius dropped to the grass, dragging Peter down from behind by his waist just in time for a curse to go flying over their heads.

  
It couldn’t have gone more wrong. The Order had planned for weeks, planted information and covered every track behind themselves.  
  
  
They’d risk assessed the crap out of it, from multiple angles, and yet here they were.  
  
  
The objective had been to draw Death Eaters into a space they had under complete surveillance and control by feeding information through a group of Dark Creatures known to be under their current gaze.  
  
  
The Death Eaters were recruiting minorities with grievances against the Ministry and then using them to attack half-bloods and Muggles.  
  
  
As they fought back to back with one another in the nakedness of the sprawling estate grounds it had become starkly clear that someone there had fed the real information over to the other side.  
  
  
They had been so certain of a victory that even James was present, after almost months now of being absent from Order missions since Lily had given birth.  
  
  
Some of them had been willing sat-out, but as the Order dwindled and the body count grew, he had been forced to almost go into hiding with his family.  
  
  
Frustration had brought him out tonight, though, and despite an aching fear that something could steal both father and husband from the Potter’s who sat patiently at home in their cottage, Sirius couldn’t help but be thrilled that James was back fighting by their side.  
  
  
Watching from the ground as Dorcas and James hid behind a hedge 400 feet away, Sirius prickled with shame at having ever felt pleased for James to be back in the midst of this.  
  
  
“Get back against this wall,” Sirius hissed up at Peter, snatching at his hand to drag him back along the ground. Peter’s hands were clammy and he clung to Sirius like a millstone around his neck.  
  
  
Under the shrieks of agony echoing across the large courtyard behind the wall they had just slammed their backs against, Peter slapped a stick against Sirius’ chest.  
  
  
Sirius plucked at it and discovered it was his own wand.  
  
  
They panted at each other and nodded in place of a ‘thanks’.  
  
  
Peter had a fleck of blood on his eyebrow having been a victim of a ricochet from the gravel path, and Sirius wondered how they had been at it for almost an hour now and were both relatively unscathed.  
  
  
He turned over his wand and swiped at the dirt obscuring the gash across the base of his thumb - a disarming narrowly escaped - and glanced past Peter toward James’ hedge again.  
  
  
Peter turned, also.  
  
  
“Remus?” he asked, and Sirius’ heart lurched.  
  
  
In an almost duty-like eagerness to keep an eye on James, to keep him safe, he had forgotten about Remus positioned at the main entrance with Caradoc.  
  
  
People were screaming, dust from shattered brick walls blanketed them at regular intervals, and Sirius could see the outstretched hand of someone dead or dying, lying just beyond the hedges to their immediate left.  
  
  
It could be Remus bleeding out on the other side of that hedge, just out of reach, and there was nothing he could do about it.  
  
  
He didn’t know what to do, where to go, how to get out of the situation with the least amount of pain inflicted to himself or anyone else. And so he froze.  
  
  
Time seemed to slow down and sound muffled itself against his ears. Peter seemed to notice and began speaking to him, but he couldn’t make out the words and couldn’t bring himself to look towards his mouth to lipread.  
  
  
Sirius felt himself being jostled and then pressed back against the wall before he even realised he’d been trying to clamber up.  
  
  
“Fuck, Sirius!” Peter landed in his lap in an attempt to ground him, and they slumped together into the soil.  
  
  
Sirius’ head thudded onto the grass and his gaze caught on the bloodied fingers a mere arm’s stretch away.  
  
  
He let his eyes go unfocused on the image and blocked out even the voice in his head that told him to _get up, get up, get up_.  
  
  
“Get up.”  
  
  
Sirius felt a sharp slap across his face.  
  
  
“Get up!”  
  
  
Hands were on him, dragging him up from the dirt.  
  
  
“Get the fucking fuck up, Sirius!”  
  
  
Sirius let his head be turned by another slap to the face and the image of the corpse’s hand replaced itself with James’ face.  
  
  
“Stop ignoring me, and get. the. fuck. up. Pete, grab his wand, we’re going over there to Dorcas. Count yourself down from three and peg it, then pop a few off over the hedge while I drag him over.”  
  
  
Sirius watched James’ profile as he spoke, saw the tick as he pushed up his glasses and tugged at his fringe.  
  
  
“Now, Pete! You can either die in this hole or try running over to that hedge. Pick quickly, mate.”  
  
  
Sirius laughed - felt himself laugh, heard himself laugh - and James turned to look at him.  
  
  
“Welcome back,” he breathed out a chuckle and patted Sirius on the shoulder.  
  
  
“Now get on your feet, we’re about to run over to Peter.”  
  
  
Sirius scrambled to his knees with a hand on James’ arm.  
  
  
He muttered a ‘sorry’ and James shook his head, grabbed onto Sirius shoulder again, and it was all fine.  
  
  
Well, as fine as it could be.  
  
  
“3, 2, 1, go!”  
  
  
They burst out from behind the bush, ran for about three seconds out in the open, and dove in behind Peter and Dorcas, who caught them at the other side.  
  
  
They had barely crashed into the plant bed and caught a breath when Sirius heard his name being called in a not entirely pleasant manner.  
  
  
“Sirius Black, the blood traitor!” The booming, accented voice heckled him from the direction of the mansion.  
  
  
Sirius looked up at Dorcas who mouthed ‘Lestrange’ back at him, and he rolled his eyes.  
  
  
Dorcas smirked and Peter extended Sirius’ wand out to him.  
  
  
“Come out and join the fun, Black! We have your dog here!”  
  
  
Sirius’ heart practically stopped.  
  
  
He had his hand on the wand, but Peter re-tightened his grip on it and shook his head.  
  
  
“Don’t go out, it’s not worth it-”  
  
  
“Not worth it? You fucking-” Sirius snatched the wand away and shoved at Peter, who almost unbalanced and tumbled out from behind the hedge.  
  
  
James caught him in time and then spun on Sirius with a hard glare.

 

***

 

Remus had also been crouched in a flower bed when it had all turned to shit.  
  
  
Caradoc’s large body was pressed up against him, shifting frequently out of discomfort and an excess of adrenaline.  
  
  
Remus’ eyes had been flitting between the sparse branches of their hiding bush from each window in the front of the mansion.  
  
  
Death Eaters were inside, they’d taken the bait, but nowhere near as many as had been rumoured.  
  
  
Something was off.  
  
  
He was rubbing at his sore eyes when it happened.  
  
  
An explosion and a shattering of glass.  
  
  
“Shit!”  
  
  
They jumped and Caradoc butted shoulders with Remus, who looked up in time to see shards of the glass that had moments ago made up the entire row of first floor windows rain down on the gravel courtyard.  
  
  
The pair were at least 150 yards back, but heard the scattering glass hitting the leaves in front of them.  
  
  
There was a beat in which they expected something drastic to occur, Death Eaters to come pouring out of the house, perhaps, but were greeted with an eerie silence, and then Gideon Prewett leapt up from the twins’ hiding spot at the opposite end of the garden.  
  
  
Remus felt Caradoc tense beside him, and had the distinct feeling that this could only end badly for the Order.  
  
  
That was when the ground floor windows followed suit and burst out across the driveway in another shocking blast.  
  
  
Despite the glass now raining down, Fabian sprung up and followed his brother toward the house.  
  
  
Remus looked up into Caradoc’s grim face. He knew what was going to happen.  
  
  
It was like seeing himself watch Sirius run after Regulus into a burning building.  
  
  
They were going in after Fabian, it wasn’t even a question.  
  
  
Remus gave a nod that he was ready and Caradoc squeezed his shoulder in some sort of thanks, and then they were up and running, curses to cover themselves bursting from their wands toward the house.  
  
  
They turned a corner and Caradoc slid into an open doorway as if he’d known it was going to be there.  
  
  
Remus skidded to stop himself overshooting it and pulled himself into the doorway after him, but found himself alone in the hall.  
  
  
Caradoc, a second ago in front of him, was now gone.  
  
  
Remus froze.  
  
  
There was no sound.  
  
  
He should have been able to hear Caradoc just ahead of him at least, expected to hear all three men, to be honest, running through the house, and there probably should have been some Death Eaters too, if he really thought about it.  
  
  
What was happening?  
  
  
A beat too late he thought about his exposed back in the doorway, and felt a crack across the back of his head.  
  
  
Before being able to turn and pull out his wand he took a second shot to the ribs and fell to his knees with a sickening crack.  


  
***

 

“-Black!”  
  
  
Remus’ body alerts him to the name and he slips back into himself in time to catch the rest of whatever is being said.  
  
  
“We have your dog here!”  
  
  
He turns his head toward the voice but a hand snatches his head back by his hair, and he can hardly open his eyes right now to see anybody anyway, so he lets himself be tugged roughly to bare his chin up.  
  
  
He can hear destruction around him, and pain, but a roiling sickness has filled his stomach at the word ‘dog’, and he’s stuck on it with a burning shame.  
  
  
People are _dying_ and he’s worried about being exposed as a Dark Creature.  
  
  
Remus is on his knees, he realises, as the sharp stone of the driveway bites and the previous impact makes them throb in time with his head.  
  
  
Blood trickles down the back of his neck, hot and sticky.  
  
  
He’s shaken and his head is released, but when Remus puts out a hand to steady himself his hand is crushed in a large, cold grip and he cries out in pain.  
  
  
“Remus!”  
  
  
It’s Sirius first, but James calls him too a fraction of a second later so that they’re almost in chorus.  
  
  
Remus blinks away some of the stars in his vision, but he’s greeted with such a horrifying sight that he presses them closed again instantly.  
  
  
There are faces in the dirt, broken bodies on the lawns, ripped from life and strewn around them everywhere.  
  
  
He hadn’t even know they had that many people with them on the mission., and it’s such a waste. Sirius sounds furious, desperate, and it resonates with him so profoundly he trembles.  
  
  
His mind lurches in and out - _where are the Prewetts, Dearborn, Moody with the information and what should have been the starting order?_  
  
  
He’s being used as a lure and there’s an aching guilt in realising that a bunch of Death Eaters know your worth to someone like Sirius; the use they could get out of having a second Black.  
  
  
He won’t see it happen.  
  
  
Remus licks his dry lips and takes a deep breath.  
  
  
It’s going to hurt either way, but he hopes it’s the Killing Curse so that it’s at least quick.  
  
  
He squeezes back on the hand that’s still crushing his own.  
  
  
There’s a breakage in there somewhere, and he lets the roar of pain help propel his voice.  
  
  
He shouts it as loud as he can so that more than just James and Sirius can hear, and tries to stuff as many words in before the inevitable muzzling.  
  
  
“Don’t go in the house, it’s a trap!”  
  
  
A second hand clamps around the back of his neck and he can’t help the gasp, but manages to get out, “Prewetts and Dearborn are go-!” before the pair of hands meet around his throat.  
  
  
He squeezes his eyes closed.  
  
  
He’s going to be choked to death, on his knees in front of his friends, and he can’t resign himself to it like he’d hoped he could - a martyr to the cause.  
  
  
He feels hot tears running down his cheeks, and then there’s a tight pressure restricting his whole body and he knows, unmistakably, that they have Disapparated.

 

 


	6. Realise, 1980

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius’ eyes linger there for a second with a look like satisfaction at the symbolism of it before his gaze snaps back to Remus.
> 
> Remus almost flinches away – unused to having or witnessing Sirius give anything his unwavering attention – like looking directly at the sun and having the sun look straight back, he’s thinking, and then Sirius does _something_.

 

 

Aug 1980

Remus presses his head between his palms like he’s physically preventing his mind from blowing at the sheer bizarreness of the moment.

 

Sirius, rocking determinedly between his thighs with a single-mindedness in his eye as he watches Remus coming apart beneath him.

 

Sirius _wants_ him.

 

He doesn’t know what changed, what revelation brought Sirius to make this move, but here they are; on Sirius’ bed, in their tiny flat, in the clammy, early hours of mid-August.

 

Remus reaches a hand up to grip the headboard and help push back against Sirius’ thrusts that are slowly shifting him up the length of the bed.

 

He feels like they could possibly rock this bed apart with the age and state of it; older than both of them put together and creaky as Remus’ bones the day after a full moon.

 

He thinks maybe they _should_ break it, burn the wood to warm them afterwards and bask in the glow of this monumental shift in their relationship.

 

 _Bask in it, dance around it naked and singing_ , he thinks, high on it; this moment he’s simultaneously been waiting for and never thought was coming for the last eight or nine years.

 

Sirius suddenly re-adjusts his position above him, leans in and looms over him, and Remus thinks for a panicked moment that he’s about to stop, but watches instead as Sirius plants a hand on the headboard over Remus’ own.

 

Sirius’ eyes linger there for a second with a look like satisfaction at the symbolism of it before his gaze snaps back to Remus.

 

Remus almost flinches away – unused to having or witnessing Sirius give anything his unwavering attention – like looking directly at the sun and having the sun look straight back, he’s thinking, and then Sirius does _something_.

 

" _Fuck_ , Sirius!”

 

It comes out half-hysterical, like an unstoppable, involuntary laugh and trails off as a moan.

 

Sirius grins, baring his teeth, and does it again, but Remus is almost ready for it this time, managing only to bite out an “Oh- _God_.”

 

“Yes,” Sirius says, and his satisfaction is palpable.

 

“Yes,” Remus answers, squeezing his eyes shut.

 

 

 

***

 

 

“Have you and Sirius argued again?” James asks the next day, squinting down at Remus as he hands him his cup of tea.

 

Remus shakes his head, let’s the scalding heat of the mug register on his palms and hisses at the pain to prevent himself from grinning.

 

He doesn’t look at Sirius - _can’t_ look at Sirius - or he’ll fail miserably.

 

As it goes, Sirius is sitting in the armchair, like a king on his throne, doing enough smirking for the both of them.

 

“What’s this idiot laughing about, then?” James indicates which particular idiot he’s meaning by planting a mug in Sirius’ hand as he says it.

 

Remus _mustn’t_ look at Sirius - is probably waiting for Remus to - so he stifles a laugh in his teacup.

 

James tuts.

 

“I’m missing all the good stuff these days,” he grumbles, plopping himself down beside Remus on the sofa, thereby blocking the direct line of sight toward Sirius.

 

It’s a blessing, really. Remus sips his tea and is thankful for James shading him from the beam of Sirius’ smugness.

 

He can’t look because he wants to grab Sirius. Roughly, he thinks, but then gently. And shake him, maybe scratch him, or pinch him, but mostly touch him gently, perhaps find the softest parts and bite them a little, and definitely lick him, and- _Christ_.

 

This is what it’s like, Remus muses, to be in love with someone like Sirius Black - everything, all at once; every clashing emotion and thought making it feel like he’s about to vibrate apart - and _god_ , should he have known it would be this way.

 

It makes him feel savage and tender, both at the same time.

 

“Please let me join in,” James begs, and Remus is so giddy with it all that he splutters his tea everywhere when he begins laughing.

 

Then they’re all suddenly chortling along with one another and spilling tea as Peter and Lily enter from the kitchen with their own brews in hand.

 

“Tell us a joke then?” Lily asks the lot of them as she gracefully lowers herself into a spot on the floor in front of the fireplace.

 

She goes from standing to sitting cross legged in almost no seconds at all, twists down into position with such ease that Remus is stopped from laughing almost immediately to marvel at her.

 

He wipes tea from his face and left knee, now trying to avoid her gaze, too, in case she notices something in his eyes. Remus knows she has always been attuned to his moods, and with the slightest suspicion the interrogation will begin.

 

“We were just laughing at how much of an idiot Sirius is,” Remus says in an attempt to subtly divert attention onto someone else. Sirius welcomes any and all attention, so he doesn’t feel so bad for it.

 

“What did he do this time, then?” Lily asks, chuckling.

 

Everyone turns, grinning, to await Remus’ riotous retelling of Sirius’ most recent foray into idiocy, and suddenly Remus is panicking.

 

“He, um,” he says without the slightest inkling as to how to finish the sentence, then takes a sip of tea to buy some time. “Well, it was, uh-”

 

He glances at Sirius, and his face is a mixture of delight and anticipation as he watches Remus flounder.

 

Remus shakes his head and rubs a hand over his face, heaving a heavy sigh.

 

“He walked in on me having a wank,” Sirius announces boldly, and the others groan and laugh loudly.

 

“You’re such an exhibitionist!” James hollers, grimacing as he undoubtedly recalls having done the same at some point in their many years sharing a dormitory.

 

Peter rolls his eyes and Lily covers hers as if she’d just been beamed the image directly into her mind, and Sirius takes the moment’s distraction to wink at Remus.

 

Remus finds himself flushing down to his neck, goes blotchy for some strange reason, and has to get up to take his coat off.


	7. Deteriorate, 1981

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus shakes his head again. There’s the temptation to comfort Sirius’ suspicion - tell him that he would never, that he loves him, and it’s only him - but it’s overshadowed by resentment for such utter mistrust, so he doesn’t say a word.
> 
> Sirius searches his face, and Remus tips his chin up slightly in response - _I dare you to call me a liar_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two segments were written as alternate versions of the same scenario.  
> I've made a small attempt at linking them together, but I'm too in love with both of them to be able to see if they don't actually work together, and if the tones clash. Hence the asterisks to separate them, just in case you want to read them as two separate versions.

October, 1981 

Sirius sits opposite Remus at the table.  
  
  
He doesn’t say a word the entire time he’s taking the seat, and that’s how Remus knows they’re about to have an argument.  
  
  
Remus stirs the dregs of soup in front of him as he waits.  
  
  
“Peter saw you with Fab Prewett in Camden the other day,” Sirius begins, and Remus finds himself already sighing in exhaustion.  
  
  
“Yes, he did.”  
  
  
Sirius taps his foot three times before he realises he’s doing it, and stops immediately.  
  
  
“You told me you were out on duty.”  
  
  
Remus nods, eyes fixed on the soup bowl. “I was. And then I finished, so I wasn’t any longer.”  
  
  
Sirius leans forward and slowly pushes the bowl out from under Remus, off to the opposite end of the table.  
  
  
Remus gets the hint and looks up at him.  
  
  
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Sirius asks, far too calmly for the look in his eyes.  
  
  
“I’m not cheating on you with Fabian Prewett,” Remus confirms, bitter at having to do such a thing. “Or anybody else, for that matter.”  
  
  
“Do you want to?”  
  
  
Remus shakes his head again. There’s the temptation to comfort Sirius’ suspicion - tell him that he would never, that he loves him, and it’s only him - but it’s overshadowed by resentment for such utter mistrust, so he doesn’t say a word.  
  
  
Sirius searches his face, and Remus tips his chin up slightly in response - _I dare you to call me a liar_ .  
  
  
“That’s not what I care about, anyway,” Sirius says suddenly, and Remus reels slightly at the detachment from something so serious as infidelity.  
  
  
“I heard that Gideon went for dinner at his sister’s that night, like he does every Thursday, along with his brother, and they always sit down to eat at seve-”  
  
  
“And I was out until nine, so where was I?” Remus cuts in, obviously exasperated, and finishes for him to help speed up the interrogation. “That was where you were headed, right?”  
  
  
Sirius purses his lips.  
  
  
“I don’t need to hear the Prewett’s fucking mealtime schedule at the same time as being accused of- of what now, if not _cheating_ on you?” Remus can’t help but laugh slightly as he says the word; the absurdity of it.  
  
  
It’s Sirius’ turn to avoid looking at Remus, and it only makes the conversation all the more irritating.  
  
  
“There wouldn’t be any accusations if you just told me where you were all the time.”  
  
  
“ _All_ of the time? Who are you? My _mother_ ?” Remus snaps.  
  
  
“We’re in a _war_ !” Sirius slams his hand down on the table and Remus gets angrier solely due to the fact that it makes him jump. “I know you know what that means, and for your safety and- and my fucking peace of mind, I need to know where you are, _yes, at all times_ !”  
  
  
“I tell you where I am.”  
  
  
Sirius looks at Remus like he’s deliberately trying to annoy him. “You still haven’t told me where you were Thursday night!”  
  
  
“I was on duty-”  
  
  
“With who? Gideon was off duty by seven o’clock that night. And Fabian went with him.”  
  
  
Remus pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes. “We swapped partners. Fabian can’t work with Caradoc any more, so we agreed to let the twins work together and I’ll go with-”  
  
  
“Why?”  
  
  
“‘Why?’, what?” Remus huffs, looking from over the top of his fingers.  
  
  
“Why can’t they work together?” Sirius makes a mental note to confirm this story with them all.  
  
  
Remus lowers his hand and gazes at Sirius a little incredulously. “They’re practically sick in love with each other. They could no more be useful partners to one another than you and I could be. How do you not know this?”  
  
  
Sirius has to adjust his knowledge of Fabian and Dearborn to accommodate this new piece of information, but doesn’t let it distract him from the current investigation.  
  
  
He shifts in his chair and backtracks to the previous line of questioning.  
  
  
“So you’re saying after Gideon left, you were with Caradoc for those two hours? Doing what?”  
  
  
“I just told you: we all swapped partners. Caradoc took over from Gideon, and we just continued being on watch.”  
  
  
“You just told me you’d finished!”  
  
  
“I was antagonising you because I knew what you were implying! I was on patrol up until 9 o’clock!” Remus yells, and kicks at one of the empty chairs.  
  
  
It skids out from beneath the table and hits the doorframe of the kitchenette.  
  
  
He knows that that admission will make the rest of his story sound unreliable now, and it only frustrates him further.  
  
  
“Why were you not at the last Order meeting? You’re missing from almost every other one, and that’s not counting those that fall at full moon-”  
  
  
“I’m out on _Order missions_ !”  
  
  
Remus buries his hands in his hair, the inescapable feeling of being in an interrogation room making him feel anxious.  
  
  
“ _Where_ ? Tell me where and with who? You’re trying to convince me of your credibility and not offering me actual details to corroborate your story.”  
  
  
“You know I can’t give you details of personal missions.”  
  
  
Sirius goes to slam his hand on the table again and thinks better of it at the last moment.  
  
  
Instead, he diverts the momentum into gritting his teeth, and his fist merely thumps the tabletop.  
  
  
“I’m asking you to, as- if you-” he stammers, stuck on how to phrase it in light of where they are at this very moment in their relationship.  
  
  
But Remus is shaking his head before Sirius even finishes. “It doesn’t matter, that’s the point. We keep it airtight, to ourselves, that’s how it stays a guaranteed secret.”  
  
  
Sirius curls his lip. He wants to invoke their old Marauder way, but Remus has made it impossible without it coming across as juvenile, and he’s right to a degree, but it should still hold true.  
  
  
“I tell James and Peter everything.”  
  
  
Remus looks despairing in his shock.  
  
  
Sirius knows it’s not just at the breach of secrecy; that very foundation that the Order sits on, but the admission of confiding in James the very things that he never did in Remus.  
  
  
He’s asking Remus to do now, in their mistrust of one another, that which he failed to do then, in their utter devotion.  
  
  
Sirius decides not to give himself time to feel guilt over it, though it aches now like a puerile thing, that petulant refusal to share with Remus if Remus wouldn’t share with him first.  
  
  
Remus visibly closes off in an attempt to limit the desolation, leaving Sirius to follow through with this.  
  
  
“No Order member I’ve spoken to knows about your missions, and I had-” Sirius’ throat sticks and he has to swallow hard to continue. “Mundungus, of all people, telling me he saw a file on you in the Ministry connecting you to known Death Eaters-”  
  
  
“We’re all connected to Death Eaters,” Remus says, completely without emotion. “Some closer than others.”  
  
  
Sirius catches the barb, but ploughs on regardless.  
  
  
“You avoid answers and coherent explanations, and you insist continuing like it’s okay, but I’m- We’re frightened, and we’ve needed _real_ answers for a long time now."  
  
  
“Ask Dumbledore. He’s the only one that can answer.” Remus tries his best still to comply, but Sirius shakes his head now.  
  
  
“Dumbledore was the one who told us that there was a- that it was time to be more careful. So, we’re being careful, and cutting out every unknown so that we can be certain.”  
  
  
Remus’ mouth hangs open slightly. He was under no impression that Sirius’ distrust ran this deep, and he is both hurt and livid at the allegation. It makes his hands shake.  
  
  
“I’m an uncertain?” Remus bites. “Purview went missing for two weeks and turned up without a scratch, unable to tell anybody where he had been. Rogaan went out on a mission where everybody got slaughtered, and he was the only one left alive. You go for drinks with Purview, you go out on missions still with Rogaan, but _me_ , _I’m_ the uncertain?”  
  
  
“James says it, too!”  
  
  
Remus bares his teeth. “James knows _shit_ !”  
  
  
And then all at once the fight goes out of him.  
  
  
He thinks of James, and of Lily, and baby Harry, and that swell of rage fades back into such an complete and aching sorrow at their situation that he loses the will to fight back.  


  
***

 

  
Remus gets up slowly, his hands planted flat on the tabletop as he pushes himself up, and Sirius is watching warily as though he expects Remus to run.

  
Remus is running over this whole thing in his head and for the life of him, he can’t think of what on earth Sirius could think he’s _doing_ when he’s not there.  
  
  
There’s this glaring explanation throbbing at the back of his head, but he hasn’t been able to reach it - or hasn’t _let_ himself go there, he realises now, because it couldn’t ever have been the correct answer.  
  
  
Finally, he looks up at Sirius. In response, and somehow sensing what is about to come, Sirius stands.  
  
  
“You think it’s me.” Remus is stunned by the sharp realisation that he is, in fact, not at all surprised.  
  
  
Whenever the sneaking suspicion that Sirius was keeping something important from him began, it was long enough ago that speaking the doubt aloud now is wholly un-shocking to him, and _god, if that doesn’t hurt_ .  
  
  
Sirius has the decency not to lie out loud, but he does shake his head pathetically.  
  
  
The anger from his face is completely replaced by a tender agony, and he stares at the ground between them, a veritable gulf now that it’s all coming out into the open.  
  
  
“I guess there’s nothing else I can say if we’re at this point,” Remus says, commendably even-voiced and with a resignation that is both exhausting and relieving.  
  
  
The waking-nightmares of this moment had always had Remus screaming, offended and determined to throw evidence to the contrary in Sirius’ face, but in the reality, there’s surprisingly little fight in him.  
  
  
The Remus of a month ago, perhaps would have sworn at least, or let being wounded by the acknowledgement of it compel him to throw a punch before walking away.  
  
  
As it is, Remus just deflates on the spot, and Sirius, having to have run through this conversation in his head several times before the execution, is outraged and distraught by the unexpected reaction.  
  
  
He steps forward and catches Remus by the collar, pulling him around to face him.  
  
  
“No. _No_ , you’re supposed to- call me a bastard, at least!” he shouts. “You're supposed to tell me why it can’t be true, tell me I’m wrong!”  
  
  
Remus watches his mouth move, let’s himself be shaken absently.  
  
  
" _Remus._ " Sirius’ voice is raw with desperation. “ _Tell_ me _. I’m wrong._ ”  
  
  
He’s not trying to avoid sounding like he’s begging, and there’s something in that which Remus appreciates, but he can’t see them coming back from this now, no matter what either of them say.  
  
  
So he puts the last of his cards on the table, just because.  
  
  
“I’m in love with you.” It's meant to be a reminder, but it just drops from his mouth, emotionless.  
  
  
In an alternate reality they would be the very words to convince Sirius that his suspicions are wrong - it would be enough - but as it is, he just lets go of Remus.  
  
  
“I can’t-” Sirius chokes out. He shakes his head hopelessly and he aches to grab hold of Remus again, but he can’t even look at him any longer. “I can’t tell if that’s true or not, anymore.”

 


	8. Benefit, 1994

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You would have said no-”
> 
> “You’re _damn right, I would have said no!_ ” He roars and Remus has the decency to look ashamed of himself, so Sirius pulls his fists away before he does any real damage.

1994  


Remus leads him down several streets that, in some dark crevice of his mind, feel… _familiar_.  
  
  
Sirius keeps catching Remus stealing glances back at him every now and then to check that he’s still following, and it has become irritating.  
  
  
There’s an awful voice in Sirius’ head that tells him he shouldn’t, and perhaps to just duck into the nearest alley and slip away, but this is Remus after all.  
  
  
He trusts Remus.  
  
  
“Where are we going again?” Sirius manages to bite out through chattering teeth.  
  
  
They have been walking for the better part of an hour, and it’s reaching 3am, and Sirius is cold.  
  
  
Remus had turned up at Dumbledore’s office at midnight and accompanied Sirius via the Floo to the edge of some farmland - no place that Sirius recognised, although the list of places left that he does recognise can be counted on one hand, and that’s one with a few fingers missing - and they have been walking ever since.  
  
  
He feels like he’s being led around, like a dog on a leash. He can’t remember anymore if that’s what irony is.  
  
  
“Look,” he says after no reply from Remus, “could we not have brought better clothing for this mid-October hike? You could have warned me, at least-”  
  
  
His complaint is cut short by Remus, who he notices almost too late has stopped walking.  
  
  
Sirius does a quick halt and just about avoids colliding with the back of him.  
  
  
Sirius goes to swear at him, but notices that Remus is looking up at the house they’re stood in front of, so Sirius follows his gaze, and some memory buried near the back of his brain comes oozing out slowly, _or emerges from between two other memories_.  
  
  
“I…” Sirius begins.  
  
  
He looks sharply at Remus, and finds that he has turned and is now watching him carefully.  
  
  
“Why have you brought me here?” Sirius asks sharply, and surprises himself with the urge to hit Remus, or scream in his face, or both.  
  
  
“It’s Dumbledore’s idea-“  
  
  
“You know I wouldn’t want to come here. Remus, you _know_ that.”  
  
  
Remus grasps his hands and that’s when he realises he’s practically clawing at the front of Remus’ coat.  
  
  
“He said just to try it out.”  
  
  
“To spring it on me like this?” He thumps Remus on the chest.  
  
  
Remus lets him.  
  
  
“You would have said no-”  
  
  
“You’re damn _right, I would have said no!_ ” He roars and Remus has the decency to look ashamed of himself, so Sirius pulls his fists away before he does any real damage.  
  
  
The silence opens up between them. A lone car rumbles past at the top of the street, the only noise other than the wind whistling down the narrow alleyways between the rows of houses.  
  
  
“This was the best of the options Dumbledore suggested,” Remus finally explains, still not comfortable meeting Sirius’ eye completely and looking somewhat like a dog with its tail between its legs.  
  
  
“He never spoke about any options with me,” Sirius replies coolly, finding it difficult to look Remus in the face. “I’m having options weighed up for me by the adults now, like I’m incapable of making my own decisions?”  
  
  
“We’re not treating you like a child, Sirius. We’re trying to help; to take the stress off your shoulders. You deserve to be comfortable, and it’s either this,” Remus gestures to the point between number 11 and number 13, “or hide-out as Padfoot in the country again. Or worse; somewhere secluded in another country, where you wouldn’t be near to Harry.”  
  
  
“Don’t use Harry-“  
  
  
“I’m not using anybody. I know he’s your main priority now, and unless you want to continue living like you were with Buckbeak, here is the safest and most comfortable place.”  
  
  
Sirius huffs. It does make sense when put like that, but it’s the last place on earth, other than Azkaban, that Sirius wants to be.  
  
  
He rakes at his hair and begins to pace up and down in front of the houses.  
  
  
Remus waits patiently until Sirius has passed him some ten times either way, and then he reaches out to gently hold Sirius’ elbow.  
  
  
Sirius allows himself to be pulled in, and they stand regulating one another’s breathing for a little while, before Remus begins to tug slightly in the direction of the buildings.  
  
  
Sirius doesn’t look up at the houses, he keeps his eyes fixed on Remus’, and Remus understands that he mustn’t break the eye contact, that it’s important to go in together.  
  
  
With their gazes averted, they approach the short path and miss the moment when the space opens up in front of them and delivers number 12 at their feet.  
  
  
“I can’t,” Sirius says suddenly, when they simultaneously raise one foot to the doorstep.   
  
  
He holds his foot in the air, and Remus thinks that it’s somewhat promising that he hasn’t put it down - the action of freezing means there’s the possibility of _un_ -freezing, whereas retreat would have meant starting from scratch again.  
  
  
“You can,” Remus soothes, and steps up so that Sirius is forced to go with him, or be left alone down on the path.  
  
  
Sirius joins him, and clings harder to his arm.  
  
  
Remus looks down at where the knuckles are white around his sleeve, and gently pries Sirius’ hand away to instead hold it in his own.  
  
  
The fingers are cold, so he rubs them between his own with one hand while his other slips into his coat pocket and fishes out a wand.  
  
  
“That’s my wand,” Sirius says in wonder, and Remus holds it out to him, handle-first.  
  
  
“Take it, then.”  
  
  
Sirius’s eyes are welling with tears as he does, overwhelmed with gratitude for Remus’ tolerance and patience.  
  
  
He rolls it in his hand and touches it to the door so quickly that it looks like an accident; an unintentional flicking of his wrist that connects it to the paint-peeling wood just inches in front.  
  
  
A series of clicks and metallic scraping indicates that some locks are magically coming undone after many years, and then the door makes an almighty creaking as it slowly edges open.  
  
  
They’re greeted by a waft of stale, dusty air, and Sirius barely manages not to gag.  
  
  
Remus flaps a hand to dissipate it quicker, and then reaches out to push the door open further.  
  
  
Sirius clamps a hand over Remus’, stopping him not even an inch from the wood.  
  
  
“I wouldn’t,” he murmurs. “...if I were you. I don’t remember what spells are on it.”  
  
  
Therefore, Sirius does the honour of shoving the door open with his foot.

 

  
***

 

  
Sirius spends the majority of their check around each room of the house restraining Remus from trying to touch things.  
  
  
Remus thinks this is more to do with Sirius wanting to touch him than any real danger towards his person from the objects housed there.  
  
  
He tries to comfort this desire in Sirius by giving over his hand each new time Sirius grasps it, and allowing him to hold it for however long he thinks is appropriate, before letting go again.  
  
  
It is when Remus finally enters the kitchen, the last room on their tour, and goes to move a precariously balanced knife on the aga, that he notices the lack of hands pulling him away.  
  
  
He turns to find that Sirius has not followed him in from the hallway, and doubles back to discover Sirius crouching against the tapestry in the parlour, with his forehead pressing against the fabric and one hand over his own charred spot on the family tree.  
  
  
Remus lowers himself onto his knees beside him.  
  
  
He tugs Sirius’ head against his chest to stifle the sobbing, and stares at the spot on the wall, now tear-stained, to find himself looking into Regulus’ eyes.  



	9. Prosper, 1981

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sirius told me that you brought him back a present from your last mission, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.”
> 
> Remus buries his face in the crook of his elbow and laughs into it, before resurfacing with a slightly redder face.
> 
> “It wasn’t a, uh, physical gift, if you know what I mean?”

Jan, 1981

Sirius made a beeline straight for the child.  
  
  
  
“It’s my favourite baby in the whole, wide world!”  
  
  
  
“I’m certain that’s him being the only baby you’ve ever met,” Lily commented as she appeared in the kitchen doorway to watch that Sirius cradled Harry’s head properly when getting him out of the cot.  
  
  
  
Remus made his way over to the television, already with its front panel removed and set to one side, and crouched down in front of it to begin pulling out the tools and replacement parts from his coat pocket.  
  
  
  
“Mnn,” Remus grunted the negative - the best he could do until he had carefully maneuvered the Werther’s Original into his cheek so as not to choke on it.  
  
  
  
“Nymphadora,” he reminded her.  
  
  
  
He didn’t even have to glance over to know that Sirius was giving Lily a smug look, and not just because she then glowered over Remus’ shoulder at him.  
  
  
  
“I refuse to believe that you did any sort of responsible care-taking.”  
  
  
  
“She made it to age 5, didn’t she? She’s not dead,” Sirius firmly reminded her, though his gaze was full and present on Harry, held up in front of his face so as to drink in the sight of him.  
  
  
  
“God, he’s dead small, isn’t he?” Sirius marvelled aloud, and the awe in his voice made the hairs on the back of Remus’ neck stand on end.   


 

 

***

  
  
  
It takes Remus all afternoon to fix the telly, and he’s dying for a cup of tea when he lowers himself gently onto the sofa next to where Sirius has fallen asleep with Harry in his arms.  
  
  
  
“Thanks, Remus,” Lily says in a quiet voice. She puts a mug of tea down on the coffee table in front of him, and sits on the floor.  
  
  
  
Remus thanks her for the tea and sighs heavily in a way that attempts to fill some of the  awkward silence that has now opened up between them.   
  
  
  
Lily smirks like she knows and isn’t phased by it.   
  
  
  
She sips her own tea and then levels Remus with a prompting stare.  
  
  
  
He gulps down his tea.   
  
  
  
“What?”  
  
  
  
“Sirius told me that you brought him back a present from your last mission, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.”  
  
  
  
Remus buries his face in the crook of his elbow and laughs into it, before resurfacing with a slightly redder face.  
  
  
  
“It wasn’t a, uh,  _ physical _ gift, if you know what I mean?”  
  
  
  
“Oh!” Lily laughs cheekily.  
  
  
  
“Well, I mean, it  _ was _ physical,” Remus adds, and Lily snorts, setting them both off into more raucous laughter.  
  
  
  
Sirius and Harry both twitch in their sleep at the startling noise, and Remus and Lily quickly fall into hushed giggling.  
  
  
  
“God, to be a fly on that wall,” she grins.  
  
  
  
Her nose scrunches with impish delight, and Remus, having barely returned to his normal complexion, flushes again.  
  
  
  
“Christ, Evans!”  
  
  
  
Remus considers burying his face again but Lily prods him playfully, a toe to his ankle, and he shakes his head at her, incredulous.  
  
  
  
“Does he act differently? In bed?” She asks suddenly, in the way she sometimes does, catching Remus completely off in how far she’ll probe.  
  
  
  
He glances quickly to his right to check if Sirius has woken up, even though he can hear the slow, steady breath from beside him.  
  
  
  
Lily waits patiently. He always does this; acts affronted at first, embarrassed and uncomfortable, but looks at her again - and yes, he’s peering at her now, considering it - and seems to recall how deeply their friendship runs, and that’s he has told her much more disturbing stories that this.  
  
  
  
His face is still slightly turned toward Sirius, but Remus is looking at her when he nods minutely.  
  
  
  
Remus’ eyes soften like he’s putting himself back into that precious moment.   
  
  
  
Lily watches and smiles softly to herself.  
  
  
  
“He practically worships me,” Remus says very quietly. “There’s none of his affected arrogance, he’s just… a boy. And it makes him  _ so _ beautiful, and its, it’s crazy because I honestly thought he couldn’t  _ get _ any more beautiful than that, but,  _ God _ -!”  
  
  
  
Remus draws in a breath and Lily can almost see what he’s describing in her mind - Sirius, completely vulnerable, thoroughly contented, wholly in awe of Remus.  
  
  
  
“Wow,” she breathes. “You’ve got it bad, Remus.”  
  
  
  
He snaps from the reverent smile he had finished speaking with straight to a somewhat flustered and self-deprecating one.  
  
  
  
“It’s very endearing,” Lily comforts him, and reaches over to squeeze his hand to really make the point.  
  
  
  


***

 

When Sirius returns from the loo later, he’s startled into almost falling down the stairs by Harry’s sudden and excruciatingly loud cry.  
  
  
  
James looks at him from the front door where he’s letting Pete in. Sirius raises a hand to say I’ll take care of this.  
  
  
  
He goes striding towards the noise, confident in his ability to calm Harry with his mere presence and finds Remus, half poised in rising from the sofa, with Harry held away from him like he’s hoping some bodily distance is an undiscovered remedy for distressed babies.   
  
  
  
As it is, Harry just cries harder.  
  
  
  
Sirius paces over and gently relieves Remus of the baby, plants Harry at his shoulder to gaze around the room and probably put Sirius’ hair in his mouth, and tries not to laugh at the look of mortification on Remus’ face.  
  
  
  
“We were doing just fine before I started singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’,” Remus confides, gaping up at the nappy dominated view of Harry, who is now gurgling quietly into Sirius’ hair.  
  
  
  
“This baby has enough stress with Prongs as a dad, without you adding to it by wailing  a repetitive song about some bloody bottles on a wall at him, Moony.”  
  
  
  
“I thought babies liked that song!”  
  
  
  
“All babies aren’t alike!” Sirius says, scandalised.  
  
  
  
Remus laughs into his hands, and struggles again to get up from the couch, even without a child in his arms.  
  
  
  
Sirius, who does so happen to have a child in his arms, holds out a hand and helps him up.   
  
  
  
When he readjusts Harry in his arms, his little eyes go sliding shut and a contented sigh is the last noise before he nods off.  
  
  
  
They stand crowding each other, gazing down at the baby between them. He is flawless and radiant, and it does something to the two twenty-something boys to make them go quiet and pensive.  
  
  
  
Remus strokes one of the thick, black curls that dip down onto Harry’s forehead,  and has to do it a second time just to experience the softness of it again.  
  
  
  
He looks up at Sirius and finds he is being watched.  
  
  
  
Sirius leans over and kisses him.   
  
  
  
“This is really weird,” Remus whispers when they move away slowly.   
  
  
  
He glances down at Harry as though he expects him to be looking, shocked and ready to tell James on them. Sirius jiggles the still-sleeping lump in his arms.  
  
  
  
“ _ This _ is weird. This is  _ James’ kid _ .” Sirius shakes his head in disbelief.  
  
  
  
If Remus let himself, he could imagine the child in Sirius’ arms to be his own, but that aches in an entirely different way, so he tries to hold the image at bay.   
  
  
  
“You can take him back now,” Sirius says. “He’s asleep.”  
  
  
  
Remus pushes the hair out of his eyes and straightens his shirt ready to receive the baby. Sirius lowers Harry into Remus’ arms, raised and ready.   
  
  
  
They fumble slightly as Remus panics that he doesn’t have Harry’s head correctly, but Sirius just smiles at him like he has it all under control.  
  
  
  
Remus touches the tip of his finger to Harry’s nose and when he looks up, Sirius is watching him with gentle eyes.  
  
  
  
“You’re not so bad with a baby. It makes you look very domestic.” Sirius smirks softly, and Remus can feel the heat creeping up his neck.  
  
  
  



	10. Score, 1980

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some nights he can barely keep himself from being heard through the thin plasterboard wall that separates their rooms. 
> 
> Some nights Remus is so raw with the effort of existing alongside Sirius that he almost wishes Sirius _would_ hear.

March, 1980

Remus knows what adults say about teenagers who claim to be in love; _it won’t last, it’s not real, you don’t understand what it is yet, you’ll know it when you’re older._  
  
  
  
They have been through it themselves after all, he thinks. They must speak from experience.  
  
  
  
And so he believes them.  
  
  
  
Which is why the thought never crosses his young mind, not even at fourteen, gazing down upon Sirius sat at his feet, his dark eyelashes lowered to the task of tying Remus’ shoelaces for him.  
  
  
  
Later, though- Later, but only five or six years, Remus knows it for what it was.  
  
  
  
It’s difficult to measure the depth of the thing when you’re restricting yourself from using words like love, which is why his fourteen year old self doesn’t dwell on his liking of Sirius a great deal more than the others. He merely wishes to be his best friend, but it is impossible to be jealous of James.  
  
  
  
Around their sixteenth year it changes - he decides he just wants to _be_ Sirius. Bright and beautiful and warm.  
  
  
  
But after they graduate, he realises: _oh shit_.  
  
  
  
It’s like living with a second secret, but since Sirius already knows the first one it makes the second feel conspicuous and exhausting.  
  
  
  
The boys all split for a very short amount of time when they leave Hogwarts, and then spend what feels like a brief year all back together again, squashed into a bedsit in the very heart of London.  
  
  
  
Remus spends the time practically climbing the walls at the fact that he sleeps across the hall from Sirius instead of their previous distance of ten feet, and has to spend the months trying to remember what it was like to look over and catch glimpses of bare skin as Sirius climbed into bed, just so he can get off at night.  
  
  
  
When Peter has to return home to nurse his mother and James finally proposes to Lily the following year, it’s only logical for Remus and Sirius to get a flat together.  
  
  
  
He allows Sirius to spread into every corner of their flat, with his touch and his smell, and then at night Remus shuts his bedroom door behind himself and works out each day's worth of longing.  
  
  
  
Some nights he can barely keep himself from being heard through the thin plasterboard wall that separates their rooms.  
  
  
  
Some nights Remus is so raw with the effort of existing alongside Sirius that he almost wishes Sirius _would_ hear.  
  
  
  
Sirius would slip in through the door, curious, and stand at the bottom of the bed watching, mesmerised. Remus would look him straight in the eyes and continue, and when it came to it he would say Sirius’ name aloud, right at him.  
  
  
  
It is another year, and he spends it clawing the tension out of himself once a month, before he gets anywhere close.  
  
  
  
Remus puts it down to their transition into a precarious lifestyle as members of the Order of the Phoenix, but something begins to shift.  
  
  
  
Sirius begins to crowd Remus when they’re speaking; he watches Remus’ face closer than before, absorbing every inch as though he expects the need to describe at a later date the explicit details of him.  
  
  
  
Remus struggles not to think about the possibility of going missing, and there being one of those face composite sketches made up like they do with the Muggle police. He pictures Sirius sticking posters with the image of Remus rendered in minute detail up on telephone poles.  
  
  
  
It usually always leads down the grim path where he compares himself to a lost dog, and then he feels sick and frightened, and at odds with their ridiculous decision to launch themselves into the middle of this war.  
  
  
  
But he knows it is essential, unavoidable, and if he’s honest, Remus loves the way it stimulates Sirius.  
  
  
  
When he’s speaking at an Order meeting, or afterwards when the boys gather at Peter’s house to gripe and confer over what was discussed, Sirius’ eyes are sharp and bright, and he speaks with a furore that makes Remus’ spine straighten.  
  
  
  
When it finally comes, they have just had one of these after-meetings, at their own flat this time, and James has just dropped the bomb and then got up and seen himself out.  
  
  
  
He wants to catch Peter at his house to give him the news before he goes out on patrol.  
  
  
  
It is silent now, with just the two of them, but the news sits in the air.  
  
  
  
Sirius, who jumped up to hug James in the heat of the moment and then wrestled him like they were both fifteen again down onto the carpet at Remus’ feet, has stayed there, and now looks over at Remus, utterly startled.  
  
  
  
“What. The. Fuck?” he yelps, beaming.  
  
  
  
Remus rakes both hands back through his hair, his elbows high and wide, chest expanded to get the air in so he can sigh the most necessary and incredulous sigh he can manage.  
  
  
  
“What?” Sirius repeats, but he’s kicked it up another octave to fully express his disbelief. “ _What?_ ”  
  
  
  
“James, with a baby!” Remus covers his face with his hands and laughs into them.  
  
  
  
“Pregnant!” Sirius says just to feel the weight of the word in his mouth.  
  
  
  
He’s kneeling all of a sudden and then leaning over and grabbing Remus by the shoulders to shake him as he repeats himself. “Pregnant! With a baby!”  
  
  
  
They laugh in each others faces.  
  
  
  
It's hard to stop once they've started, and they're howling in awe and excitement for a good five minutes with Sirius still grasping at and shaking Remus.  
  
  
  
Remus clutches back at him and becomes vaguely aware that Sirius is practically falling into his lap - he looms in between Remus' knees, close and holding Remus so that by the time their laughter trails away it is a noticeable intimacy.  
  
  
  
“God, they’ve come so far-” Remus is beginning to say when he falters.  
  
  
  
The next words in the thought get stuck in his throat as Sirius’ hand on his right shoulder is removed, and Sirius repositions it instead rather high on Remus’ right thigh.  
  
  
  
Sirius is still grinning as though nothing is amiss, and in all honesty, if his thumb was just half an inch further out they would be in drastically different territory, but as it is, Remus manages to clear his throat as if that were the reason for his pause, and continues on.  
  
  
  
“R-Remember her throwing a teacup at his head in Divination and saying he would be the last person on earth she would procreate with?” Remus’ face is contorted to maintain an easygoing smile, but he is intensely searching Sirius’ eyes to figure out if this is a mistaken touch.  
  
  
  
“She soon took that back,” Sirius grins.  
  
  
  
His hand is still there.  
  
  
  
“They wasted no time really, did they?”  
  
  
  
He thinks perhaps Sirius meant to pat his leg in a friendly manner, and the landing was just off a little.  
  
  
  
“Can’t blame them though, eh? I mean, with what’s going on and us putting ourselves in danger now, quite a lot."  
  
  
  
He pauses here and Remus is captivated, curious. _Where is this going, Sirius?_  
  
  
  
"It’s only understandable," Sirius adds with a half-shrug, "that they’ve probably been going at it like rabbits.”  
  
  
  
“Probably,” Remus can only think to nod his agreement.  
  
  
  
As he is doing so Sirius quickly moves his thumb over that half-inch border that separates accident from intent, and he freezes.  
  
  
  
He can’t help the gut-reaction that has him flick his gaze down to where the situation has occurred, but when Remus looks up again, he is immediately distracted by the new look on Sirius’ face.  
  
  
  
It is focused and intent upon something that is sat precisely where Remus is on the sofa.  
  
  
  
He feels like a deer caught in the headlights.  
  
  
  
Sirius looks down at his own hand on Remus’ leg and Remus knows he is about to make a move, anticipates it with such a force that he can’t quite breathe correctly.  
  
  
  
And then without thinking, he says, “Sirius?”  
  
  
  
It isn’t quick, like the removal of a hand from a hob that didn’t realise it was turned on; that shocked, humiliating catching-up of the consequences. Sirius’ eyes just snap back to their casual swirling grey, and he removes his hand slowly to help push himself up off the carpet.  
  
  
  
“I can’t wait to see them as parents,” he says, as he stalks away to the kitchen, the jovial lilt to his voice returned.  
  
  
  
Remus is allowed to relax all of the muscles in his body and let out a long, controlled breath.  
  
  
  
“They’re going to be amazing or awful,” he shouts to Sirius, returning the conversational tone as if to say _whatever just happened is fine, we can forget it if you’d like_.  
  
  
  
“Awfully hilarious,” Sirius calls back.  
  
  
  
Remus gets up from the couch while Sirius is out of the room.  
  
  
  
“ _Perfectly_ hilarious,” he corrects as he passes the kitchen towards his bedroom, where he will replay and pick apart those two minutes to torture himself for the rest of eternity.  
  
  
  
Or at least until it happens again.


	11. Recover, 1996

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reward for making it through that agonising existence, Remus thinks, should have been a long and happy life, surely? For Sirius, if for anyone at all.

Nov, 1996

Remus feels like his ribcage is being squeezed very slowly, crushed at a pace that makes each new breath hurt a little more than the last.  
  
  
  
His eyes dart around the room, at the faces of all of the Order, and he knows nobody can tell that talking about Sirius hurts him this much.  
  
  
  
He knows that they are trying to speak honorably of the dead, but wishes they would just _shut up_ .  
  
  
  
Nobody knows how broken Sirius was this past year, they don’t understand the extent, that he went running out of this fucking house at the first chance because it was a claustrophobic nightmare - and Remus actually physically aches now with the understanding of it.  
  
  
  
And it’s a tragedy that he _only now_ can fully sympathise with it, where he had previously pushed and persuaded Sirius to maintain, withstand, persevere here, for the sake of this- this- _joke of a resistance_ .  
  
  
  
His rage echoes that of twelve years ago and it rings in  his ears.  
  
  
  
Remus stands up so quickly, his chair is knocked backwards and thuds against the kitchen flagging.  
  
  
  
Everyone goes quiet and all eyes turn on him.  
  
  
  
He’s sure he excuses himself, but no words seem to actually come out, and then he’s stumbling away to the hallway.  
  
  
  
It’s not far enough, he realises, just as he is about to break down, and takes the stairs two at a time until he is standing on the first floor gasping for breath through his sobs.  
  
  
  
Remus plants his back against the grimy silk damask of the wallpaper and presses a hand over his mouth to stifle the noise.  
  
  
  
They’re all that’s left, and it’s not enough. It wasn’t enough with Sirius, and now they’re without him, and the loss is unreal.  
  
  
  
He finds it such a remarkable shock to the system to finally be confronting the moment which they all spent a great deal of their young lives anticipating - death was, at the very specific age of 21, so incredibly inevitable, that to have lived through it and come out the other side, now makes it feel like nothing less than an insult.  
  
  
  
The reward for making it through that agonising existence, Remus thinks, should have been a long and happy life, surely? For Sirius, if for anyone at all.  
  
  
  
Remus slides his back down the wall until he is sitting, staring at the door to Sirius’ teenage bedroom.  
  
  
  
He never saw a young Sirius stood here in the doorway, or moving around the room just beyond, having never stepped foot in the house prior to this past year or so, but he can picture it in his mind - Remus’ recollection of that lithe, clean-limbed, vibrant boy has never faltered, _will never falter_ .  
  
  
  
He clutches at his chest as though he needs to claw the heart right out of its cavity to relieve this agonising pain, that it will solve his problem if only it could be done.  
  
  
  
Really, he is grounding himself with the pressure of a fist against his breastbone, a touch on the side of painful, but it's a counterbalance at this point.  
  
  
  
_How did you survive this the first time?_ he has to ask himself, but he knows it’s not the same, really, just needs some hope that there’s a way to live through it.  
  
  
  
He thinks of Harry, and then hates himself for feeling that he’s not enough.

 

 

***

 

 

Remus throws his head back and laughs.  
  
  
  
He’s mildly surprised that the ability within himself hasn’t shrivelled up entirely and died, but what he finds more alarming in the present is the look Tonks is giving him.  
  
  
  
From where she stands, beside the large concrete plant-pot outside the pub’s entrance, a cigarette wedged between two knuckles, Tonks has one eyebrow raised and the line of her is tensed like she’s ready to call for help if he needs it.  
  
  
  
Remus purses his lips in the face of her shock.  
  
  
  
“I haven’t lost my sense of humour,” he assures Tonks, and her lips twist into a smirk as she relaxes.  
  
  
  
“I never doubted that for a second,” she replies, taking a quick drag of the cigarette. “Otherwise, why would you be wearing those socks?”  
  
  
  
Remus hitches his trouser leg up so they can both closer inspect the green and orange striped socks that he is wearing.  
  
  
  
He grins as Tonks gives a low whistle.  
  
  
  
“They’re truly hideous,” she says, delightedly. “I love them on you.”  
  
  
  
Her mouth buzzes around the word as she squashes it hastily into her sentence, and she feels brave for it.  
  
  
  
“These are handmade by a very busy woman down in Ottery St. Catchpole, who would be distraught to hear you say that,” Remus chides, but he’s still smirking down at her, and he finished his own cigarette almost ten minutes ago now, Tonks reminds herself.  
  
  
  
She presses the back of her hand to her mouth.  
  
  
  
“Oh, oops!” She snickers. “Don’t tell her I said that. Actually, they’re rather funky for Molly – she’s really experimenting these days, I see!”  
  
  
  
“I’ll be sure to let her know you’re interested in a pair for next Christmas, then.”  
  
  
  
“I want a replica of yours, tell her.” Tonks is laughing, her full chortle that her mother tells her isn’t becoming, which makes her do it even harder. “We can match, then-“  
  
  
  
Tonks cuts herself off abruptly and swallows, almost chokes on it, but shoves her cigarette to her lips to hide it and looks up at the clouds.  
  
  
  
She isn’t even sure what was going to come next, and now her last words hang in the air between them, almost resounding off the brick of the pub courtyard.  
  
  
  
She claws through her mind for a subject to throw out, distract them from the memory of two weeks earlier.  
  
  
  
Everybody knows you can’t change these things easily, or at your own will - Tonks comforts herself with that fact – which is to say, she didn’t do it on purpose, and was certainly as surprised as everyone else when she called up her Patronus to send a message and instead of her jackrabbit, appeared a large wolf.  
  
  
  
Remus’ face was unreadable.  
  
  
  
Between trying to quickly send the message, not make too obvious a glance over at him, and the fact that Remus turned away to busy himself, Tonks didn’t have time to dissect the expression.  
  
  
  
Now, though, she glances back over at Remus and decides she _wants_ to know.  
  
  
  
She finds he’s already looking at her and he has a polite, but soft smile on his face.  
  
  
  
“Mine was an animal once, too, you know?” he says conversationally into the uncomfortable silence.  “We learned them in fourth year; the Patronus. It was taught to us by the Prewetts - then our childhood heroes purely because they were brilliant and popular, and they had graduated already - and we’d of course go on to fight alongside in the Order-”  
  
  
  
He realises that he’s started Telling Stories and so bites his tongue.  
  
  
  
“But you already know all of this, I’m sorry,” he smiles apologetically.  
  
  
  
“No, please,” Tonks rushes out, desperate for anything he’ll give up.  
  
  
  
Remus is a strange and secretive creature and catching him in a moment of sharing is so rare that she becomes entranced and forgets about the cigarette smoldering between her fingers.  
  
  
  
It almost burns her before she notices it has reduced to practically nothing in her hand and she drops it quickly.  
  
  
  
“Please, do go on,” she begs.  
  
  
  
Remus smiles, gratefully.  
  
  
  
“It was a dog,” he says, and then leaves a beat. He watches Tonks carefully to ensure she has fully understood his meaning.  
  
  
  
Inside, Tonks is enraptured. She had always suspected _something_ , held each memory in quiet suspension as though waiting for a moment like this when one of them would confirm the looks and touches that she had noticed, even as a child.  
  
  
  
She nods solemnly.  
  
  
  
“James and Peter; the others, they just assumed it was a wolf while we were in school. Maybe not later, of course - they may have both known by then, but,” he smiles to himself. “It was a dog.”  
  
  
  
She can see the memory in his eyes - it’s bright and wonderful, and she feels the skin all along her arms and the back of her neck tingling with it.  
  
  
  
“After- an incident at school later that year, it changed, but it was a confused shape rather than an animal anymore. And, I suppose, it’s stayed that way ever since.”  
  
  
  
“Why did it change?” she asks as gently as possible. She can’t _not_ ask.  
  
  
  
He chews at his lip a moment. “It was different, afterwards, how I felt about my illness in relation to him. I forgave him, of course, but it couldn’t go back to how it was before - and perhaps that was only natural. We were teenagers, then, so it was always going to change.”  
  
  
  
He shrugs, as though indifferent, but Tonks can see that it must have been a deep and lasting hurt.  
  
  
  
A minute passes and Remus doesn’t continue, much to Tonks’ dismay.  
  
  
  
“Did he know?” she finally prompts, and again she knows she’s asking personal and possibly painful questions, but she is desperate to know. She couldn’t leave the courtyard without it. “That your patronus was...?”  
  
  
  
“Him?” Remus chuckles softly.  
  
  
  
He meets her gaze with a grin. “Oh, he knew.”  
  
  
  
Tonks grins back.

 

 


	12. Harm, 1981

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus plants his own hand on top of Sirius’ to ground himself. There’s a slip, and he looks down to see blood between their hands.

April, 1981 

  
“I know, _I know_! But they did, they just left us there...” James held his hands up, and they were covered in a grey dirt. It was smeared all up one of his forearms, bare due to having a torn sleeve. “Alive.”  
  
  
  
Sirius stared at it, letting the conversation wash over him.  
  
  
  
They were back at the safe house with Moody bearing down on them, insistent to know what had happened. He snapped his questions at the three boys, and Sirius grew ever indignant.  
  
  
  
“It doesn’t happen anymore,” Moody was saying in response to James’ claim that out of fourteen Order members and affiliates now dead, three 21-year-olds made it out alive.  
  
  
  
“They must have sent a message, at least!” Moody roars, and Sirius has finally had enough.  
  
  
  
“They _did_ send a message! It was ‘ _you have a spy_ _amongst you_ ’, and then they-” he went to say ‘kidnap’, but it suddenly seemed like such a cartoon-like word in the moment. “They _took_ Remus. They could have killed him in front of me, but they didn’t, and now they have him and they’re, they’re-”  
  
  
  
“He must be their man, then,” Moody growled, and if Sirius hadn’t had such a blindingly visceral reaction to the words he may have caught the regret in the tone of their delivery.  
  
  
  
As it was, he bolted from his chair and made a movement as though to jump over the desk and throttle Moody, but James was up just as quick beside him and pressed a firm hand to Sirius’ shoulder.  
  
  
  
Slowly, Sirius let the pressure ease him and he relaxed back into the chair as though James had put a charm on him.  
  
  
  
James promptly took over speaking.  
  
  
  
“Remus is _not_ their man,” James said firmly. “Trust us. He would never.”  
  
  
  
Moody stared hard into James’ eyes, and when he returned to him again after glancing quickly but pointedly over at Sirius -- silently fuming in his seat -- James was still holding his gaze.  
  
  
  
Moody relented a shrug like he didn’t care either way any more; after all, the damage was now done.  
  
  
  
“Then we had all best pray he is put out of his misery quickly, because if he’s not their man, then he’s sure as shit going to be their animal when the time comes--”  
  
  
  
Before he could finish, Sirius’ hand came out fast and swiped the entirety of the items on Moody’s desk onto the floor with an almighty crash.  
  
  
  
Moody levelled him with a look of silent rage, to which Sirius bared his teeth and spat, “ _Fuck_ you!” before bolting from the room.  
  
  
  
James sprinted after him.

 

 

***

 

  
Remus comes back to himself in what feels like slow motion.  
  
  
  
It had happened so fast that it feels like his reaction to being hit and all of the pain had saved itself for when he was ready, and now it assaults him on waking.  
  
  
  
He can’t tell, of course, how long exactly it was that he was unconscious, but he does know that Sirius was somewhere in the grounds of the sprawling estate they had ambushed, and now he’s crouching above Remus, his wand arm raised and not quite pointing at Remus.  
  
  
  
Everything is still muffled and foggy. Remus shakes his head in an attempt at kick-starting it, and blinks hard.  
  
  
  
He regrets the movement  immediately as his eyes twinge with a deep, muscle-like ache that shoots to the back of his brain.  
  
  
  
He wants to sit up, but finds upon trying to get an elbow beneath himself --and connecting it instead, quite sharply, with a brick wall behind him-- that he already is.  
  
  
  
Remus is slumped against a wall. It’s made of a cheap, red, crumbling clay that the owners of the mansion would never have invested in for such a house, so he surmises that they are no longer where they had previously been.  
  
  
  
He remembers then that he had been side-long apparated, and that he can remember the beginning -- thick fingers around his throat, a crushing pain, and a distinct feeling like he was about to die -- but not the end, and so that must have been when he passed out.  
  
  
  
He looks down to see that Sirius has his free hand on Remus’ shoulder to keep him from toppling over onto the ground – he realises this when Sirius lets go momentarily to shift his position and Remus feels himself begin to teeter considerably to the right, but the hand is back instantly, fisting in the shoulder of his jacket and holding him still.  
  
  
  
Remus plants his own hand on top of Sirius’ to ground himself. There’s a slip, and he looks down to see blood between their hands.  
  
  
  
It’s unclear who it belongs to.  
  
  
  
A wave of nausea washes over him and takes its time receding. He knows the steps for this sort of thing and begins taking deep breaths in through his nose as he watches Sirius in full battle-mode above him.  
  
  
  
Remus doesn’t know what’s happening any more.  
  
  
  
Really though, he hadn’t been entirely certain what was happening to begin with; how it started, how the Death Eaters knew what was occurring.  
  
  
  
Which is a lie, really, that he has to tell himself in place of the searing truth of it - that one of the people he knows, fights alongside, trusts with his life, has given over their secrets to the people that want to kill them. He’d rather hear himself say he doesn’t know, rather than acknowledge it aloud.  
  
  
  
He shakes the thought out of his head as it threatens to bring another bout of sickness, and squeezes Sirius’ hand for attention.  
  
  
  
Sirius is currently peering around a wall to his left, and still holding his wand arm in the air over them both.  
  
  
  
Remus can’t figure out what he’s doing exactly until Sirius spares a moment to glance sideways at him and a spell hits them.  
  
  
  
They see the curse flying towards them and Remus gasps in a breath that he chokes on when, instead of wreaking devastation, it hits the shielding spell Sirius is holding up over them.  
  
  
  
It sparks, like a bolt of lightning, lighting up the bubble of a shield momentarily before allowing it to fade back into invisibility.  
  
  
  
He sees Sirius shudder when it hits, but it doesn’t falter or crack, and Sirius’ face only betrays a look of discomfort for the briefest of moments before he looks back down at Remus with determination.  
  
  
  
“—get up?”  
  
  
  
Remus only catches the end of Sirius’ question, the beginning drowned out by his own coughing and a Death Eater screaming something at them from the other side of the alley they’re currently occupying, but he gets the drift.  
  
  
  
He nods jerkily and scrubs a hand over his face.  
  
  
  
When he reaches for his wand it’s not in his trouser pocket as usual and he feels the panic start to bubble up, until Sirius slides the hand steadying Remus down over his chest and into Remus’ own jacket’s inside pocket, slipping out his gnarled wand and pressing it into his chest as he continues to keep a lookout for approaching Death Eaters.  
  
  
  
“Thanks,” Remus breathes a sigh of relief and pats Sirius’ hand once he’s grabbed his wand. “I think- I’m okay now. I’m all right.”  
  
  
  
He pats again to let Sirius know that he can let go, and Sirius spares him another glance, takes his hand away and lets it linger at Remus’ jaw a moment.  
  
  
  
Remus sways and Sirius’ fingers smudge blood onto his chin, but for the smallest moment Sirius is holding Remus’ face in that hand and looking at him like he is drinking him in.  
  
  
  
Remus wants to weep with it, the understanding between them in just that touch, but then another spell hits Sirius’ shield and the spark of it shows up the crack that it makes, and Sirius has to return his attention to the fight.

 

  
  
  
  
***

 

 

Remus loses time again. He knows this because he drags his eyelids open and realises he is flat on his back in a small, beige bedroom, with Sirius leaning over him.  
  
  
  
He feels out of breath, and his mouth is dry. His head feels incredibly heavy on the pillow, and he would very much like to sleep, but Sirius is unbuttoning his shirt for him, and so he thinks maybe they were in the middle of something.  
  
  
  
Remus lifts his arms and they’re heavy too, but he just about manages to make his hands land on Sirius’ shoulders.  
  
  
  
Sirius makes a shrugging motion as though he is pushing Remus’ hands away, and this makes Remus desperate suddenly to kiss him, to check that Sirius still wants to be kissed by him.  
  
  
  
He makes to say Sirius’ name, but his dry mouth only emits a whisper, and Sirius starts to shush him.  
  
  
  
Sirius still hasn’t looked directly at him, so Remus digs an elbow into the bed and pushes up to connect, to press his mouth to Sirius’, but the motion is so unexpected and sudden to Sirius that it shocks him and they knock their heads and teeth together in the process.  
  
  
  
“Agh! Moony--” he yelps, and his hand stops Remus from falling backwards, but lowers him back to the bed gently.  
  
  
  
“Sorry,” Remus manages to cough out, and he squeezes his eyes shut against a throbbing in his head. When he looks to Sirius for forgiveness he sees blood around his mouth, and starts. “Are you--? You’re bleeding--”  
  
  
  
Sirius looks at him now and his eyes are scared when he shakes his head. “No, I’m not. I’m fine, it’s going to be fine.”  
  
  
  
Remus notices that he is intently and hurriedly still tugging the shirt off of him, and at the same time he realises that there’s something sticky clinging to his upper lip.  
  
  
  
He licks at it and twitches at the jolt of pain that cuts a path up his lip and into his sinuses.  
  
  
  
“It’s going to be okay,” Sirius repeats, almost to himself, and then curiously shouts, “Peter?”  
  
  
  
Remus starts to panic.  
  
  
  
He tries to lift his head to look down at himself, but his head won’t allow the movement, and so he grasps up at Sirius’ arm again.  
  
  
  
“It’s going to be all right, I promise,” Sirius tries to say firmly, but his voice is just thick and he can hear that it doesn’t sound right, so he takes Remus’ hand and squeezes it.  
  
  
  
Peter comes running in with medical supplies in his hands and Sirius quickly swipes the blood from his mouth with his sleeve.  
  
  
  
Remus feels his eyes rolling back and he can do nothing to stop it.

 

 

 


	13. Obstruct, 1979

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus has been waiting for this, and the anticipation and bitterness has built up to such a degree by this point that he’s practically powerless against the urge when he finds himself saying, “Nothing shocks me when it comes to your family, Sirius.”

Sept, 1979 

They’re arguing.  
  
  
  
Remus has been asked to go on a mission, a dangerous one -- though they all come as dangerous ones these days -- and has been told to do it alone.  
  
  
  
It was asked of him during the last meeting, and Sirius had voiced no protest at the time, so Remus had no reason to believe there was a problem until they reached their flat later that night, and he found himself ambushed in the main room by a livid Sirius, intent on getting him to rescind his agreement with the Order.  
  
  
  
“No!” Remus laughs. He is looking up at Sirius from his spot on the sofa.  
  
  
  
Sirius is stood over him going very red in the face, irritated that Remus is finding this an amusing topic of conversation.  
  
  
  
“I’m not joking, Moony. You can’t go on your own, look what happened the last time--”  
  
  
  
Remus chokes back another laugh-- No, he _scoffs_ , Sirius notes, and slowly climbs up from the couch, leaving his book face down on the seat, open to his page - a gesture implying that he will be back shortly to resume, and this only infuriates Sirius all the more.  
  
  
  
Sirius has been mixing up his growing confusion towards Remus with these kinds of frustrations _at_ him, for little things such as this; inconsequential and misplaced.  
  
  
  
“That was an ambush, not a mission gone awry.”  
  
  
  
“What’s the difference? _Anything_ can happen, and it’s-- it’s just too dangerous.”  
  
  
  
“ _Sirius,_ ” Remus says, not unkindly because he catches the sentiment beneath, but, “they’re _all_ dangerous. That’s the nature of them as Order missions.”  
  
  
  
“Yes, but,” Sirius scrambles for something. It makes him sound petulant and Remus sighs.  
  
  
  
“I appreciate your concern, Sirius,” he’s saying, but Sirius isn’t listening, he’s racking his brain for a better excuse and then finally gestures to Remus’ arm.  
  
  
  
“You’re back and shoulder: you’re not even fully healed yet! And that happened the last time you went out alone.”  
  
  
  
Remus is startled, and it must show on his face, he realises, because Sirius lowers his hand and asks “What?” sharply.  
  
  
  
Remus raises an eyebrow and leaves a beat to allow Sirius to back out of this -- they’re teetering on the edge of having the conversation Sirius has taken great pains to avoid for weeks now.  
  
  
  
“Nothing,” Remus mutters. “I’m just shocked you brought it up.”  
  
  
  
“Your shoulder? Why should that shock you?”  
  
  
  
Remus does laugh again now, at the absurdity of the question, and he knows he shouldn’t, but they have been arguing and antagonising one another in little ways for several weeks like this, clambering over and butting up against each other in their tiny flat, and it has felt like a storm brewing.  
  
  
  
Remus has been waiting for this, and the anticipation and bitterness has built up to such a degree by this point that he’s practically powerless against the urge when he finds himself saying, “Nothing shocks me when it comes to your family, Sirius.”  
  
  
  
The cruelty of it startles them both silent for a second, and Sirius manages to look both hurt and enraged by the words for that moment before his expression hardens.  
  
  
  
Remus waits for him to throw something back so that he can justify the harshness, but Sirius leaves him a wide berth and the guilt settles in nicely.  
  
  
  
It takes him a moment for him to find his standing ground again.  
  
  
  
“I’m shocked,” Remus says, taking another stab at it, “that you have the audacity to imply that I’m incapable of going on a solo mission based upon the one incident where I was attacked by your brother.”  
  
  
  
“That’s got nothing to do with this--” is the tack Sirius apparently chooses to take, but Remus will only accept evasion, not lying.  
  
  
  
“He has _everything_ to do with this! And your refusal to talk about it is hurting everyone involved!”  
  
  
  
Sirius’ look pierces Remus and says _how dare you_ , but Remus just tilts his head and it replies _I gave you a chance not to go here_.  
  
  
  
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
  
  
“I think I do, Sirius, because I know you, and I’ve had to watch the thought of your brother practically torture you for years, and it--” _tortures me, too_ , he manages to stop himself saying.  
  
  
  
He makes a desperate grasp for an alternative end to the sentence and between that, and Sirius’ insistence that this is a non-problem, Remus feels compelled to make the point; “--that’s not even mentioning the obvious threat that the whole thing poses to The Order.”  
  
  
  
“What, like the ‘obvious threat’ _you_ pose to The Order?” Sirius shoots back, and Remus has to take a step backwards, reeling at the words as if Sirius has struck him across the face.  
  
  
  
Sirius turns away to hide the flush of shame on his own, and when he glances back again he looks sorry, and then his expression changes.  
  
  
  
Suddenly, Remus can see it in his face -- that Sirius is going to open it all up for him now, and maybe, he thinks, Sirius even put his own foot in it this time because he _needs_ it to be clawed out of him, needs _Remus_ to claw it out of him -- but God, it’s a terrifying prospect all of a sudden.  
  
  
  
Sirius stares pointedly off to one side and chews the inside of his cheek like he’s struggling to say the words aloud. When he finally speaks, it’s barely audible.  
  
  
  
“He’s just a child.”  
  
  
  
Remus shakes his head, but Sirius still doesn’t look. “No, he’s not. He’s barely a year younger than us.”  
  
  
  
“But he’s not had the same, the same education. He doesn’t know--”  
  
  
  
“Right from wrong?” Remus finishes for him, incredulously. “Sirius, he’s had the exact same education as you!”  
  
  
  
Sirius shakes his head almost frantically. “You don’t know,” he says, and he looks so young, so scared.  
  
  
  
“You don’t know what it’s like in that house,” he gasps. “The things they put in your head, and the stuff that they--”  
  
  
  
He stops short of the end of that sentence and Remus can’t help feel the relief at it -- _could he handle knowing the full extent of it, when it could be anything at all that they did to him?_ _  
_  
  
  
“ _You_ managed to see past it. You had no guidance whatsoever, nothing but your own critical thinking. If anything, Regulus was better off by having you to listen to, _and yet_ \--”  
  
  
  
“It doesn’t matter!” Sirius snaps back. “It doesn’t matter what I said to him! It’s the voice of the- the- the black sheep, the outsider! He’s got a million others telling him the opposite, and then those fucking masked _monsters_ come along and he, he doesn’t know what he’s doing!”  
  
  
  
Remus’ hands tremble at his sides.  
  
  
  
Sirius is both wrong and right at the same time -- Regulus is lost and alone, and if anyone acts as his last tether to morality and sense, it’s Sirius, but that doesn’t mean Sirius should have to sacrifice himself in the attempt of it -- and so Remus can’t reconcile the two to make a gentle response.  
  
  
  
“He knows what he’s doing,” he tells Sirius. “He knew what he was doing when he tried to kill me.”  
  
  
  
“I don’t believe it,” Sirius says, panic-stricken. He’s looking at Remus, doubtful and frightened at the possibility that his brother hates him so much that he would want to kill him, and in lieu of Sirius, would target his best friends.  
  
  
  
“He wasn’t in a mask, Sirius,” Remus explains. “I don’t think he was on any sort of mission--”  
  
  
  
Suddenly, Sirius grabs a fistful of Remus’ collar and puts him up against the wall. It’s one quick movement, no more than a step or two backwards and a shove, but it’s fast and hard, and it leaves them pressed against the wall staring at one another in shock.  
  
  
  
Sirius can’t seem to figure out where to go from here -- there’s obviously no undoing it -- so he stands frozen, with his hands on Remus and his breath shaking.  
  
  
  
Remus reaches up slowly to wrap a hand around one of Sirius’, and pries it free of his shirt.  
  
  
  
Sirius lets go, and his hands jump away like he’s been scalded.  
  
  
  
He cannot take his eyes from Remus’, as though waiting to hear what Remus has to say -- if he will excuse or condemn him.  
  
  
  
“He did it because he wanted to,” Remus says firmly.  
  
  
  
Sirius’ face crumples slightly. “You never told me--”  
  
  
  
“No.” _Because you ran off before I could finish, to check if The Order had wind of it yet, to protect Regulus from them. Because I wanted to protect you from the thought of your brother being a murderer. Because seeing you hurt by him makes me want to scream._  
  
  
  
And then Sirius says something so strange, Remus spends years trying to fathom it out, and having been an only-child, gets no closer to understanding than he does in the moment.  
  
  
  
“He’s all I have,” he whispers.  
  
  
  
All Remus can do not to yell, or cry, or lash out, is step past Sirius and pick his book up from the sofa.  
  
  
  
He half-turns back when he has it gripped firmly in his fist, and says, “I’m going on that mission. You’re right; anything can happen, but The Order is _all I have_ , and we are in a war, after all.”  
  
  
  
Remus leaves Sirius standing in the middle of the room, shaking, and exits the flat.

 

 

 

*** 

 

 

 Dec, 1979

Remus hears a key in the lock and stills.  
  
  
  
He has spent a great deal of the afternoon into evening pacing in front of the windows, debating whether to call another Order member and check up on Sirius, who went out at the crack of dawn and has sent no word to say why he didn’t return again at three o’clock.  
  
  
  
Remus has passed through several stages of emotion already over the course of the day, so now that Sirius is confirmedly safe and present, Remus is comfortable affecting a mood of Justifiably Angry should Sirius want to speak to him.  
  
  
  
He holds a finger in the centre of his book as a placeholder to give a cursory glance over his shoulder, and finds his resolve immediately faltering when he sees Sirius’ face.  
  
  
  
He gets up from the couch before he knows what he’s doing, and the book in his lap falls to the floor with a thud, forgotten, as he rounds the sofa and catches Sirius in his arms just before he collapses against the wall.  
  
  
  
“Sirius, what--?” Remus asks, his voice high in panic as he runs his hands over Sirius checking for injuries. There’s not a spot of blood in sight, and other than the horror he looks up at Remus with, there appears nothing amiss with him. “What’s happened?”  
  
  
  
“Regulus,” Sirius gasps, and Remus feels like a rug that he didn’t know he was stood on has suddenly been pulled out from under him.  
  
  
  
He’s often felt like he has been conditioned over the years to become apprehensive at the very mention of Regulus’ name.  
  
  
  
He knows it’s because the name causes Sirius to somehow revert back to a freshly Sorted version of himself -- sullen, unpredictable, prone to outbursts.  
  
  
  
It never fails to make Remus feel a strange sort of afraid -- almost like there’s no room for both Remus and Regulus together in Sirius’ life, and where the notion has come from he has no idea, but God help him, Remus knows if there was even any sort of competition to it he would lose to Regulus every time.  
  
  
  
Their argument from months ago had served them no other purpose than to prove once again that there was an untouchable love there, despite everything, and that this very fact caused Sirius no end of grief, knowing that he should hate Regulus, but couldn’t find it within himself to do so.  
  
  
  
Remus continued to accept, if not understood it, and they had left it as it was, but it’s back wreaking havoc and causing Sirius to sob and gasp, and make all manner of helpless noises against the wall.  
  
  
  
He’s literally writhing in Remus’ arms, but he’s not shrugging Remus off, and then it becomes so startlingly obvious what the end of the sentence is that Remus doesn’t even need to hear it said aloud.  
  
  
  
His hands start to shake as if in sympathy with Sirius’ anguish and he becomes frightened of hearing it.  
  
  
  
“Sirius--” he says, trying to pull Sirius against him, tell him he knows now, he knows it already from the way he’s thudding his head back against the wall, but Remus’ own voice has gone raw with distress and he can’t help but stammer. “S-Sirius, stop. Stop.”  
  
  
  
“He’s dead, he’s head,” Sirius is saying, and Remus has to handle him a little roughly to pull him away from the wall.  
  
  
  
This causes them to overbalance and land in the centre of the hallway with Sirius curled in against Remus’ chest, but they settle there and Remus rocks them together through the grief.  
  
  
  
Sirius exhausts himself out eventually, and falls asleep against Remus in the dark of the hallway.  
  
  
  
Remus sits there, unmoving, feels his eyes growing red and sore with tiredness until the early hours of the morning. The clock he can just about see on a shelf in the main room looks like it says two o’clock, but it might be three, when Sirius finally stirs.  
  
  
  
Remus watches as he carefully extracts himself and stand up. He's waiting for Sirius to tell him how it happened, surely, or how he heard, or how it changes things now, and they will have a proper conversation about it, or perhaps even just a few important words.  
  
  
  
Remus is trying to prepare himself with something comforting to say, at the very least, but in the end, Sirius does none of those things.  
  
  
  
When he tugs Remus to his feet alongside him, Sirius rakes the hair back from his face and takes a deep breath before meeting Remus’ gaze.  
  
  
  
Then with a set jaw and a cold look he simply says, “One less Death Eater to worry about,” and stalks away to his room.  
  
  
  
Remus is left standing in the hallway like the breath has been ripped from his lungs, and knows with agonising certainty that it’s the last they will ever speak about Regulus.

 

 


	14. Pay-off. 1980

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Did you hear what I--?”
> 
> “No, I don’t think I did,” Remus says quickly. He hears Sirius shut the door behind them both.
> 
> And suddenly Sirius’ hand is on his arm and he is both moving Remus further into the flat and turning him around.

August, 1980 

  
The front door slams shut behind them both, and Remus stalks up the stairs ahead of Sirius to reach their third floor flat.  
  
  
  
He turns back to face him when he reaches the door, but Sirius has stopped on the second to last step, looking grim and like he is about to ask Remus to do something he knows Remus will probably disagree with.  
  
  
  
His dark eyebrows furrow, and the frown casts his eyes in shadow making them look black as he gazes imploringly at Remus, who knows what that look means, because he already knows what is going to be asked.  
  
  
  
“Please don’t,” Sirius says quietly.  
  
  
  
Remus has the distinct feeling of déjà vu -- standing in their flat, arguing about Remus going on a mission -- and it makes him feel weary and tired. He tips his head back and sighs at the tobacco stains on the hall ceiling.  
  
  
  
“Please don’t do this again,” Remus asks now, exhausted already, and they’ve barely begun.  
  
  
  
“I’m not saying you’re incapable, but I don’t- I don’t want you to have to,” Sirius is carrying on and pinching the bridge of his nose is all Remus can do not to pull his hair out at finding themselves back at this again.  
  
  
  
“I know what you want, but it can’t be helped! _Christ_ , Sirius, you knew what we were getting into when we joined up.”  
  
  
  
“I didn’t even want to join the fucking thing!” Sirius roars back, livid in one second and then heartbreakingly devastated with himself in the next. “I did it for you,” he gasps then, and suddenly he has his hands on Remus’ chest, pulling and pressing like he isn’t sure he wants to go ahead with whatever they’re intent on doing.  
  
  
  
“Don’t say that,” Remus begs, a little terrified, because to think that Sirius has been doing this for any other reason than that it’s the right thing to do makes Remus feel sick and alone.  
  
  
  
Sirius shakes his head. “I believe in it, of course I do, I’m not saying I’m- I just mean that I wish I could believe in it the way, I don’t know, the way other people across the country do; without risking their lives-”  
  
  
  
“ _Everybody_ who agrees that magic makes a wizard, and not blood, is risking their lives, whether or not they’re going out and physically fighting these people.”  
  
  
  
Sirius sighs as though Remus hasn’t understood what he’s trying to say.  
  
  
  
“There is no front line, Sirius, it’s _all of us_ against them, _together._ ”  
  
  
  
“Together? Then why do you have to go alone?” Sirius shoots back, and Remus is all at once caught out by the response.  
  
  
  
He has to turn away; busies himself with fishing his keys out of his pocket.  
  
  
  
Sirius comes up behind him and sighs. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “You just-- you don’t understand.”  
  
  
  
He says it in such a quiet, pained voice, and then he puts a hand on Remus’ lower back.  
  
  
  
Remus is jamming the key into the keyhole and he’s just about to turn it in the lock when Sirius runs the hand on his back up to his shoulder and then presses the length of his body up against Remus from behind.  
  
  
  
Remus freezes with his hand still raised, and Sirius buries his face into the crook of Remus’ neck, breathes him in, and mutters something into his skin.  
  
  
  
“I need you, Moony,” he murmurs desperately, and Remus, thinking his head is going to fall off, has to turn the key quickly and push his way into the apartment.  
  
  
  
He pauses on the mat to put his keys away, but he can’t bring himself to turn and look at Sirius.  
  
  
  
“Did you hear what I--?”  
  
  
  
“No, I don’t think I did,” Remus says quickly. He hears Sirius shut the door behind them both.  
  
  
  
And suddenly Sirius’ hand is on his arm and he is both moving Remus further into the flat and turning him around.  
  
  
  
They stumble over someone’s shoes and even before they can glance to see whose they are, Sirius pushes Remus back against the wall.  
  
  
  
“What are you doing?” Remus asks stupidly, and Sirius presses his body flush with Remus’ in answer.  
  
  
  
His heart is racing and he is very close to panting in the way his breath is coming.  
  
  
  
“Remus?” Sirius asks carefully, and then, “ _Remus_ .”  
  
  
  
He practically groans it and now Remus must be panting because he can see that Sirius is so entranced by the hot, wet, red of his mouth that he can’t even bring himself to ask again, and so he just licks into Remus’ mouth desperately.  
  
  
  
Remus somewhat involuntarily arches into him, presses up against the thigh between his legs and sighs at the relief of finally being able to do it.  
  
  
  
At that Sirius grins into the kiss, and finally pulls back to look at Remus, but when he does so Remus frantically asks him again what he’s doing.  
  
  
  
“I was about to go crazy if I didn’t get to touch you--” Sirius begins to explain, but Remus shakes his head, frustrated.  
  
  
  
“No, I mean why are you stopping?” he huffs, and drags Sirius back in.

 

 

  
***

 

  
Remus does go on the job in the end. He goes alone, like he did all those times before, and he comes back fine. It makes them all comfortable in the mindset that if you can scrape through going solo, then you’re guaranteed to come back from a partnered mission.  
  
  
  
This, of course, means they are all the more startled when Benjy Fenwick is murdered. He’s ‘missing’ all the end of the year, and then within the first month of the new year they find the first of just a handful of body parts.  
  
  
  
Sirius and Remus never have to have the argument about going out alone ever again.  
  
  
  
It becomes abundantly clear that they are in an outright _war_.  
  
  
  
They’d all agreed it had sounded ridiculous that year or so earlier when Dumbledore had used the word in an meeting, but after the things they start to see in the weeks following the discovery of Benjy it no longer feels strange and out of place like it once was.  
  
  
  
It’s somehow both terrifying and exhilarating, and they rush back after almost every risky outing or close call, buzzing from head to toe with an excess of adrenaline, and work it out on each other in bed, or on the couch, or -- on occasion -- the hallway floor.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here](http://doyouwantwarmcravendale.tumblr.com/post/162124539685/peters-gonna-re-align-your-nose-moony); here's a taster comic for the next chap.


	15. Aid, 1981

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It was like he wasn’t feeling any of it. He couldn’t tell he was-- that he--”
> 
> He swallowed hard.
> 
> “He’s not dying,” Peter said firmly.

April/May 1981  


They made it out -- and only God, or Merlin, or whoever, knew how they managed it -- but their only option was to go to Peter’s.  
  
  
  
They apparated, barely without the addition of a splinching, onto the doorstep of his parent’s house, and Sirius’ knock was himself and Remus falling against the door.  
  
  
  
Peter had them collapse upon his welcome mat as he tugged the door open, and then hurried them inside before any neighbours spotted it, dragging Remus inside and putting him on Peter’s bed.  
  
  
  
Peter did most of the treatment, and Sirius observed that he was rather good at it.  
  
  
  
His own hands shook and he tried repeatedly to inconspicuously hold Remus’ hand or stroke hair from his face, to which Peter eventually huffed and instructed him to sit on the other side of the bed and keep Remus’ pulse as an excuse to hold him.  
  
  
  
“If you need to touch him, I don’t care,” he mumbled, shrugging as he looped another stitch into the wound at Remus’ stomach.  
  
  
  
Sirius gave him a look of uncertainty, and Peter sighed.  
  
  
  
“I know about… it. Anyway, you have blood around your mouth from--”  
  
  
  
Peter said this last bit a little embarrassed, as he nodded toward Remus’ face.  
  
  
  
They both looked to the mess where Remus’ face was caked in dark, clotted blood. It centred around his nose, which was broken, and one of his nostrils had been ripped open, along with his upper lip.  
  
  
  
The blood had poured down into his mouth and where his lips were now parted, it was clear that his teeth were stained crimson with it.  
  
  
  
Sirius spat on his sleeve and began to scrub at his own face again.  
  
  
  
“He didn’t know what was going on, and he tried to--” Sirius gestured to his mouth, still red but rather more in a raw way after his clean-up attempt. “It was like he wasn’t feeling any of it. He couldn’t tell he was-- that he--”  
  
  
  
He swallowed hard.  
  
  
  
“He’s not dying,” Peter said firmly. “He’s just asleep now.”  
  
  
  
Remus’ eyes were swollen and red at the lids. His eyebrows made him appear to be frowning deeply in his unconscious state, as though he could feel all the pain of it even in his slumber, and Sirius hoped that the medicines Peter had administered were doing their job to make such a thing impossible.  
  
  
  
Sirius’ eyes skittered over Remus’ chest -- minutely rising and falling -- to where Peter’s blood-slicked fingers tied off another line of stitching on Remus’ abdomen.  
  
  
  
The wound was so big, and the fact that Remus had been entirely unaware of it had terrified Sirius.  
  
  
  
He thanked whatever God was listening, for magic and medicine, and the friends like Peter who worked tirelessly through the night, plying Remus with healing spells, salves, dressings, and care.  
  
  
  
It was the next evening, after it had grown dark, that they wrangled it so that Lily could leave Godric’s Hollow and see to Remus.  
  
  
  
She stalked into Peter’s room and went straight to Remus' side without looking at anybody else.  
  
  
  
She frowned down at him in a way that made Peter, watching from the doorway, think she was about to start crying, but instead just made a small noise of sadness and stroked Remus’ hair, before sliding her bag off her shoulder and sitting on the stool from where Peter had stitched him up.  
  
  
  
Peter shuffled over and stood at her shoulder. Lily looked up at him with a small smile, then over her shoulder to where she had caught sight of Sirius.  
  
  
  
He was asleep in a corner where a large, sturdy-looking bookcase kept him propped upright. He looked grubby and worn-thin.  
  
  
  
“He’s had dittany and some skele-gro,” Peter began to recite to Lily, so she turned back to the patient. “I haven’t been able to give him the blood-replenishment stuff yet because he only just stopped bleeding through the bandages, so I thought it would be pointless.”  
  
  
  
Lily twisted her mouth and Peter knew then that she would have given it to him anyway.  
  
  
  
“I did--” Peter started once more, then stalled. “I gave him some Muggle stuff, too. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or not, but you didn’t see him, he was--”  
  
  
  
Peter glanced to Sirius quickly, to check he was still asleep, then added in a low and serious voice, “He was slipping away. He’d gone into shock.”  
  
  
  
“That’s all right, Pete. I understand,” she hummed, and stroked his arm. “What d’you give him?”  
  
  
  
“Morphine.”  
  
  
  
Lily nodded, opening up the bag in her lap, and pulled out fresh bandages and bottles of ointments.  
  
  
  
“It helped, to ease him like, and he did fall asleep eventually, but he started saying some weird things before he did.”  
  
  
  
Lily paused with her hands hovering over the gauze at Remus’ face. “Like what?”  
  
  
  
Peter took a deep breath. “It was like he was talking to the, the wolf. But himself, you know? Begging. It was horrible.”  
  
  
  
Lily resumed her inspection of the flesh under the bandage, let the process of it distract her from the heartbreak of it all, and sighed.  
  
  
  
“The full is just over a week away. He’s going to burst all of these stitches if we can’t find a way to speed up the healing.”  
  
  
  
They applied more healing spells and Lily gave Peter some of her supplies of good quality salves and tinctures before she left again. Sirius slept through the whole visit, and Lily was too grateful to him for bringing Remus back that she didn’t dare wake him before he was ready.  
  
  
  
The first thing Sirius did when he awoke was claw his way up from the corner to stand over Remus, who was still fast asleep on the bed.  
  
  
  
“What happened to his hand?” he asked Peter sharply, moving as if to touch the new bandaging around the knuckles of Remus’ right hand, but stopping short.  
  
  
  
Peter stirred from where he was dozing on a chair by the door, took a moment to gather what Sirius was asking, then rubbed a hand down his face.  
  
  
  
“Turns out it was broken. Lily found it, sorted it out. I’d already given him the bone stuff though, so it’ll be sorted by tomorrow, just needed a splint in case he tried to use it again without realising.”  
  
  
  
“Good--” Sirius was nodding, and stopped.  
  
  
  
His eyes had caught on the marks around Remus’ neck which, now lit by the natural morning light, were clearly imprints of large fingers. They stood out purple against Remus’ fair skin.  
  
  
  
“Jesus Christ.” Sirius’ all but choked at the sight of them, felt himself go cold all over.  
  
  
  
Curses and splinches and mis-hit spells were one thing; they were thrown out by a faceless enemy to wreak havoc, and put a burning rage into Sirius’ stomach, made him seethe with thoughts of revenge, but these--  
  
  
  
This was personal. Someone had put their hands on Remus, looked into his face and his frightened eyes, and taken the time to tighten their fingers around his throat and feel the very breath leave him.  
  
  
  
The rest of it would all heal and scar and the consolation was that Remus was used to that sort of thing, it would go in the pile with the others and hopefully he would be able to put it to the back of his mind, but this was different.  
  
  
  
“He’s lucky,” Peter said then, and Sirius had not noticed him rise from near the door and come to stand beside him.  
  
  
  
He lowered his hand from where he had unconsciously begun to touch his own neck and turned with an incredulous, almost livid look at Peter, but Peter returned it with a fierce certainty.  
  
  
  
“That, _alone,_ could have killed him,” he pointed out.

 

 

 

***

 

 

  
“Couldn’t you have done this while I was still out cold?” Remus asks with such a pitying sadness in his hoarse voice that Peter feels thoroughly guilty, standing at the foot of the bed, pointing his wand at Remus’ face.  
  
  
  
He exchanges a look with Sirius who is sat on the stool beside Remus, letting his hand be clutched tightly, but Sirius provides no aid and just looks down at the bed-sheets.  
  
  
  
He is thinking solely about how Remus’ hand in his own is sweaty with nervous anticipation.  
  
  
  
Peter is about to realign Remus’ nose so that it can heal correctly.  
  
  
  
“We had to give you so many things just to keep you a-- alive, t-that I was worried doing it all at the same time would be too much,” Peter tells him apologetically. “It was the least of your problems, to be honest.”  
  
  
  
Remus squeezes his eyes shut and readjusts his grip on Sirius’ fingers. They’re already a little crushing in their grasp, but Sirius doesn’t mind -- any pain he can leach away from Remus makes him feel useful.  
  
  
  
“‘Kay,” Remus says with a nod, and then holds very still.  
  
  
  
Peter swallows hard, and then practically spits the word out as he snaps his wrist, as though he hopes saying and doing it quickly with make it less painful.  
  
  
  
Funnily enough, Remus’ reaction is not to squeeze Sirius’ hand harder, but to let go of it completely so as to cover his face with both hands and yelp.  
  
  
  
He throws himself forward, bends over himself, swearing loudly between whimpers, and Sirius watches as a long string of near-black blood drips down from between his hands onto the grubby bedsheets between his thighs.  
  
  
  
Peter rushes forward to see to him.  
  
  
  
Taking Remus’ wrists, he moves his hands out of the way to see that the nose certainly lines up like it used to, but has dislodged the clot that had begun to heal it, and torn open a few of the stitches to his lip directly beneath.  
  
  
  
Peter tips Remus’ head up to see it better, and Remus blinks through tears, panting through the pain, which is thankfully ebbing.  
  
  
  
“It’s all right?” Sirius asks, his voice reedy with concern.  
  
  
  
Peter nods. “Just need to clean it up and re-stitch it a bit, that’s all.” He sucks in a breath through his nose and Sirius knows he’s getting sick from the sight of the blood, so tells him to go fetch the warm water. Peter gives him a thankful nod and scurries away.  
  
  
  
It’s eerily quiet.  
  
  
  
The bedroom is at the back of the house, and though it’s only small, every room feels isolated, distant from the others.  
  
  
  
Sounds barely travel, so that when Peter has left, they have no notion of where in the house he has gone to -- he could be stood just outside, to one side of the doorway, listening, for all they know. Or he could have left the house entirely.  
  
  
  
From the angle below him on the stool, Sirius’ view of Remus has him haloed by the light coming from the dingy, unshaded bulb hanging in the centre of the ceiling.  
  
  
  
The curtains are closed and the corners of the room are dark, and though the yellow light pours on him from above, it makes the parts he hunches over fall into shadow.  
  
  
  
Sirius gets up and sits on the edge of the bed, facing him.  
  
  
  
Remus looks over with his head still tilted back and gives a jerky laugh.  
  
  
  
“And I thought I was used to pain,” he says, voice cracking, and then laughs again like it is the stupidest thought he has ever had to admit.  
  
  
  
Sirius reaches out, puts a hand to the back of Remus’ neck and tips his head down. Another string of blood goes stretching toward the mattress, and Remus has to look up from under dark lashes now to see Sirius.  
  
  
  
“You’ll end up swallowing it all,” Sirius mutters by way of an explanation. “It’ll make you sick to your stomach, otherwise.”  
  
  
  
But of course Remus knew that -- the previous position was just a pain relief, making it easier to breathe.  
  
  
  
Something in what Sirius says catches at Remus, though, and he finds himself glancing down at his own abdomen, suddenly remembering that something is there, and Sirius has to grab his hand in time to stop him touching it.  
  
  
  
Remus looks up, dazed. His eyes ask Sirius what it is and how it’s there.  
  
  
  
“You don’t feel it right now because you’re on some heavy shit, but it’s gonna come--” he licks his lips and looks so pained to have to tell Remus this. “It’s gonna hit you, probably right after the full moon, and we’re gonna have to work some real fucking magic to put you back together, but we did it once, and we can do it again.”  
  
  
  
Remus is shaking now with the knowledge of it, nodding frantically to convince himself of Sirius’ promise, and he has to use Sirius’ hand on his neck to lead his own across. He presses his fingers in like all he has done to last through this is cling to Sirius and he doesn’t intend to stop now.  
  
  
  
Sirius lets Remus press his face in and kiss him in small, desperate gasps that must hurt, but do nothing to sway him from his goal.  
  
  
  
There is going to be Remus’ blood on Sirius’ face again, but he can hardly find it in him to care as he returns gentle, lingering kisses to a mouth sticky with the tang of iron.  
  
  
  
Then Peter clears his throat in the doorway.  
  
  
  
Sirius gets up and turns away from Peter to hide his undoubtedly bloodstained face, but Remus doesn’t hurry to let go of his hand, where they have tangled their fingers between themselves.  
  
  
  
He looks almost defiantly over at Peter, who just gives him a weak smile and raises the bowl of water and fresh gauze as some sort of peace offering.  
  
  
  
“Cheers, Pete,” Remus croaks, then claws at Sirius’ arm for help lying back down.

 

 


	16. Hinder, 1976

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus shoulders his way past, and Peter stands to intercept, but Remus shoots him a look and he sits back down.
> 
> He needs this, he thinks, as he paces across the room to where Sirius sits, forlornly on the trunk at the end of his four-poster.

1976 

The morning after, he had sat in the infirmary and Madam Pomfrey fussed about him as usual, but when he looked up to give her a grateful smile she had avoided his eye.  
  
  
  
By the third time it happened, coupled with the glaring absence of his lunchtime visitors, Remus had known there was something wrong.  
  
  
  
His stomach turned over and he found that he could no longer stomach the corned beef sandwiches in front of him on the plate.  
  
  
  
Pomfrey had tutted when she came to collect his tray and saw them untouched.  
  
  
  
“H-has something…” he had started to say, and then had to swallow hard and it was dry all the way down. Remus pressed to get the words unstuck. “-happened?”  
  
  
  
She pretended she hadn’t heard him, and reached down to take the tray, but Remus held it fast in his lap until she was forced to look up at him.  
  
  
  
Her face was a complicated thing, but the overwhelming amount of pity in her eyes hit Remus so hard that he let go of the tray without thinking.  
  
  
  
She straightened with it in her hands and pursed her lips to counteract the sadness in her eyes.  
  
  
  
“The Headmaster will be along after lunch,” she said softly.  
  
  
  
A moment passed and she didn’t move, obviously considered adding something more, but then decided against it and settled with asking, “Are you sure you’ll not try even just one of the little sarnies here?”  
  
  
  
Remus shook his head stiffly, and she gave him a curt nod before trotting away again.  
  
  
  
He lay there for twenty minutes more in agonising dread before Dumbledore came shuffling in through the tall doors at the end of the wing, and Remus struggled himself into sitting position.  
  
  
  
Dumbledore approached, stopped at the foot of Remus’ bed, and glanced painfully slowly up and down the room.  
  
  
  
Christ, Remus thought with frustration, _don’t you think you’d know if anybody else was here? Just tell me what’s going on, you old bat!_  
  
  
  
As it went, Remus just watched him silently take the chair from the far wall and place it at the bedside. He sat in it and made a show of getting comfortable.  
  
  
  
“Sir--” Remus started, but Dumbledore, tugging the robes straight at his feet, had held a finger in the air in a gesture that said ‘just one moment’, and Remus was cut off abruptly.  
  
  
  
“Make yourself comfy, Mr Lupin,” Dumbledore had said then, and it had sounded like a suggestion, but Remus immediately set to shifting himself against the pillows despite not being noticeably uncomfortable beforehand.  
  
  
  
When Dumbledore was satisfied that they had cosied themselves sufficiently, he folded his hands in his lap and levelled Remus with a look of regret.  
  
  
  
The breath caught instantly in Remus’ throat at that, and the overwhelming urge to cry crept up on him. _This is it_ , he thought.  
  
  
  
“Am I expelled?” he asked desperately.  
  
  
  
“No, Remus,” Dumbledore replied gently -- too gently, like Pomfrey’s pitying look earlier, and it turned his stomach like the sandwiches -- and so then Remus did begin to cry.  
  
  
  
He gasped in air to try and calm himself, his face flushing hot and red with shame as he tried to make it stop, but the headmaster simply nodded in understanding and began to tug a handkerchief from inside his robes.  
  
  
  
He was leaning to hold it out to Remus when, at the last minute, he had stopped short from handing it over.  
  
  
  
Remus gulped.  
  
  
  
The hairs on the back of his neck tingled and stood on end, and Dumbledore gave him a knowing look.  
  
  
  
He slipped his wand out of his sleeve, lightning quick, and tapped it against the cloth in his hand, and with a flourish it neatly rearranged itself into a bucket, which dropped into Remus’ lap just seconds before he threw up.  
  
  
  
“A second near-miss,” Dumbledore had mused, but Remus was too busy retching to hear him.

 

 

***

 

 

  
  
  
Remus had been kept from classes for the rest of that day.  
  
  
  
He had known the boys were all waiting for him in the tower because they left the message with Pomfrey at the infirmary doors when she wouldn’t let them in.  
  
  
  
Judging by the time on his watch, Remus surmised that they probably ran all the way from their last lesson of the day to come and see him.  
  
  
  
“He’ll be with you later this evening,” he had heard Pomfrey tell them curtly, trying to shove them out of the doorway so that she could actually shut it. “Please, gentlemen, I shan’t think twice about trapping your feet or fingers.”  
  
  
  
“We’d have to come in and be seen to then, wouldn’t we?” James said triumphantly, and Pomfrey had tutted loudly, but they had left a moment later.  
  
  
  
She walked past the end of Remus’ bed to get to her little office after that, and shot him a look that held Remus personally responsible for the grief the Marauders regularly gave her.  
  
  
  
Remus responded with an apologetic smile, to which she simply shook her head with exasperation, before disappearing into her room.  
  
  
  
When she had gone, however, Remus had let the smile slip from his face and wondered why he had felt the need to excuse them this time, like he always did, under the current circumstances.  
  
  
  
He started to feel sick again, and tipped his head back onto the headboard to watch the sun set against the far wall, and wait.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

When Dumbledore had told him everything Remus had felt physically heartbroken. His chest hurt, he couldn’t stop crying, and he’d been sick again after Dumbledore had finished and left.  
  
  
  
Pomfrey had kept him an extra night for that, but it only made him worse.  
  
  
  
He hadn’t slept, but kept slipping into ten minute bouts of nightmare-filled slumber, only to jerk awake sweating, or nauseous, or clutching something painfully hard.  
  
  
  
He finds himself, then, on the cusp of discharge time both desperate and terrified of seeing the others, of speaking to them, certain that he will crumple into a sobbing mess the moment they're in the same room together.  
  
  
  
He’s so certain of this, that when it finally comes time to climb the stairs to the tower, he’s shocked at the rage that fills him with every new step he takes toward the common room.  
  
  
  
When he’s crossed the threshold of the painting, he pulls out his wand and stalks quickly through the throng of Gryffindor students to the staircase at the far wall.  
  
  
  
They part to let him through, and  he scales the stairs there shaking with anger.  
  
  
  
James is up off his bed as soon as Remus bursts in, reaching for him as though he knows what he’s going to do.  
  
  
  
“Moony! Finally--” he starts, but then, “Now, just hold on--!”  
  
  
  
Remus shoulders his way past, and Peter stands to intercept, but Remus shoots him a look and he sits back down.  
  
  
  
He needs this, he thinks, as he paces across the room to where Sirius sits, forlornly on the trunk at the end of his four-poster.  
  
  
  
He sees the wand in Remus’ hand and tenses, but at the last moment Remus drops it, pulls his hand back and punches Sirius hard in the nose.  
  
  
  
It’s like a breath had been held up until that moment, and suddenly it’s all noise and commotion as James and Peter lunge for Remus’ arms, but he’s delivering blow after blow.  
  
  
  
Sirius’s hands are raised to protect himself, but he’s not fighting back, and Remus can see he has bloodied his nose already in just three hard strikes. It feels good, and he doesn’t like that it feels good, but he can’t stop.  
  
  
  
James and Peter eventually drag him backwards, but they all overbalance and land in a heap on the floor.  
  
  
  
Sirius drops to his knees with them, and grabs for Remus, frantic but gentle.  
  
  
  
Remus shoves his hands away, but Sirius keeps clawing at him until Remus gives up, exhausted, and Sirius buries himself against his Remus' chest.  
  
  
  
“I’m so sorry, Moony, I’m so sorry,” he whispers into Remus’ shoulder, and there will be tears and blood on Remus’ shirt, but he doesn’t push him off.  
  
  
  
Remus just lowers his head onto Sirius’ shoulder and squeezes his eyes shut to hold back his own tears, and that’s it.

 


	17. Lose, 1979

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s stuck in this horrid place between wanting Sirius’ attention, and finding that it is no more focused upon him that when they are arguing.

November, 1979 

  
Remus thinks so embarrassingly frequently of Sirius’s hands on him after that argument about Regulus -- the one that saw him up against the wall, the pain of knuckles digging into his collarbone  -- that he genuinely becomes concerned that he’ll start goading Sirius merely in the hopes of being touched that way again.  
  
  
   
He is fully aware of how glaringly masochistic that is, not to mention wholly immoral, and is therefore absolutely certain he wouldn’t sink that low, but he’s driving himself insane with it.  
  
  
  
He’s stuck in this horrid place between wanting Sirius’ attention, and finding that it is no more focused upon him that when they are arguing.  
  
  
  
Since that moment Sirius has spent weeks almost tip-toeing around him, and being so careful with every brush and skimming contact that Remus notices the lack of instances that usually result in them.  
  
  
  
Sirius stops imposing upon Remus’ morning routine in the bathroom, but has started waiting for the sound of him finishing before leaving his room. He gets up and does small fetching tasks himself rather than asking Remus to pass things over.  
  
  
  
The previously carefree affectionate touches falter in mid-air, and less than half of them land anymore.  
  
  
  
Which is why Remus, somewhat now touch-starved and desperate, flinches one evening when Sirius is on a rant about Dumbledore and in doing so, gestures rather wildly towards him.  
  
  
  
They’ve been to an Order meeting and Sirius is lit from the inside by the usual mixture of excitement and frustration, making him seem to fill the room as he paces, and raises his voice, and throws his arms about.  
  
  
  
“It’s absolutely ridiculous!” he’s saying, and Remus is pulling a face that is rather noncommittal, because the subject is not so black and white as Sirius is making out.  
  
  
  
Remus replies with something along the lines of “I can see how it feels that way”, unaware that Sirius has been catapulted into one of his moods where he needs either instant agreement, or silence, and so when Sirius snaps back “It _is_ that fucking way!” at the same time as pointing sharply towards him, Remus is helpless to wince and reel back from it.  
  
  
  
Sirius visibly startles at the reaction, outraged at the movement, and gapes openly at Remus.  
  
  
  
“Did you just--? Did you think I was going to hit you?” He says, and his voice is stuck like he can’t decide if that’s heartbreaking or hilarious.  
  
  
  
Remus looks a little embarrassed and shakes his head. “No!” He forces a laugh. “No, I just get twitchy this time of the month. You know…”  
  
  
  
Sirius frowns uncertainly and Remus can see the mood shrinking behind his eyes. He’s losing his post-meeting buzz and Remus sucked it out of him by being a twitching, achingly besotted idiot.  
  
  
  
“Because you know I’d never...” Sirius tries to say very firmly, but he falls short and he's almost asking. In fact, he’s staring very intently at Remus when he says it, like he’s willing him to feel the utter truth in it. “I don’t know what that was when I, I sort of shoved you that time, but I wasn’t going to like, hit you or anything."  
  
  
  
Remus knows the urge, made peace with the rage he has to contend with on a monthly basis, when it swells like the moon and becomes such a volatile thing within himself for those white-hot hours before the change.   
  
  
  
He thinks back to being fifteen, letting it open up in himself for the first time and striking Sirius, and flexes his fingers at his side.  
  
  
  
"I swear, I’d never hurt you, Moony,” Sirius says.  
  
  
  
Remus doesn’t know what to say to that.  
  
  
  
He knows he can't say it back, not honestly.  
  
  
  
“Okay,” he mutters, because Sirius is looking at him expectantly - expecting him to say ‘ _of course I know that_ ’, but he doesn’t, and really can you ever _swear_ something like that?, Remus is thinking, so just sticks with his quiet “Okay”.

 

 

***

 

  
Sirius snaps back to normal after James and Lily’s wedding.  
  
  
  
It softens him, molds him back into his affectionate self at the mere sight of them clutching one another and shoving fistfuls of a massive white cake in each others faces.  
  
  
  
He kisses Remus that night.  
  
  
  
It’s just on the cheek, in celebration, but Remus buzzes from it and spends the rest of the night frightened that anybody and everybody can read it on him, how utterly ruined he is by this one small gesture.  
  
  
  
He tries to avoid Sirius for the remainder of the evening, but he fails miserably, and is cornered during a slow song by Mrs Potter, who asks him to “relieve poor Peter of that drunken clown before he hurts him.”  
  
  
  
Remus chuckles, but she raises an eyebrow that says “now, please”, and he pushes away from the wall to do his duty. He puts his flute of champagne down on a nearby table and tugs Sirius’ hand off Peter’s waist.  
  
  
  
“C’mon, Pete. You don’t have to humour him, just- here, swap this for a water, would you?”  
  
  
  
Peter gives Remus a tight but grateful smile and goes plodding off  with Sirius’ pint toward the bar, leaving Remus to attempt to drag Sirius over to a chair.  
  
  
  
Unfortunately, Sirius takes Remus’ approach as him cutting in, wraps his arms around his waist and begins to sway them on the spot, out of time with the music.  
  
  
  
Remus laughs at Sirius’ intent expression; his eyes shut, bottom lip between his teeth, concentrating on the steps, and Sirius looks up at the noise, eyes bright and a killer smile on his lips.  
  
  
  
It stuns Remus for a second, and he stops laughing, remembers what he was trying to do.  
  
  
  
“Sit down, before you fall down, please,” he instructs, letting himself be jiggled back and forth, but in the general direction of the nearest chair.  
  
  
  
He backs Sirius up to it and then shoves him off, so that he collapses into the seat with a huff, then watches as Sirius lifts his hand and goes to take a sip of a beer that is no longer there.  
  
  
  
Remus has to hold his stomach with laughing so hard at Sirius’ utter confusion as he tries to work out where his drink has gone.  
  
  
  
Sirius turns to him and becomes convinced that he’s stolen it from him, grabs Remus by his suit jacket and tugs him in, but just before he starts rummaging in Remus’ pockets, Peter returns and slips the glass of water into Sirius’ hand.  
  
  
  
Remus is conflicted with irritation and gratefulness toward Peter for interrupting what would have been Sirius’ hands roaming all over him, and has to excuse himself to avoid snapping, says he has to go and find his own champagne again.  
  
  
  
He passes it on the table at the edge of the dance floor, heading straight to the toilets to calm himself down, maybe rub one out if he can't manage it.  
  
  
  
This night does not belong to Remus, however, and he’s foiled in his attempt by two hulking great arseholes in the toilet cubicle next to him, who come scuffling and slamming in just as Remus has his back planted against the door of his own cubicle and is about to undo his fly.  
  
  
  
He freezes at the unmistakable voices of Fabian Prewett and Caradoc Dearborn.  
  
  
  
They’re murmuring quietly to one another, but they also think the bathroom is empty -- that, or they just don’t care --and yes, Remus notes with such alarm that he audibly gasps, that is the sound of them kissing.  
  
  
  
Thankfully, they’re much too occupied to hear Remus slip out, and he’s scurrying back to the ballroom, giddy with the news he has to share with Sirius when he’s caught off guard a second time by the sight of Sirius dipping Marlene McKinnon, quite expertly considering how drunk he is, in the middle of the dance floor.  
  
  
  
Remus smiles warmly at them, finds his champagne again, takes a gulp, and then almost spits it out the moment he sees Sirius raise Marlene again in his arms and kiss her firmly on the lips.  
  
  
  
Remus begins coughing violently, and Peter appears to smack him on the back, but it’s no help really.  
  
  
  
Remus knows he’s done for the night.

 


	18. Reap, 1980

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I thought it was about time you knew,” Sirius says sincerely.
> 
> “How I make you feel?” Remus asks coyly. Sirius’ eyes keep raking up and down his body, and it’s making him shift, not uncomfortably, under the gaze, so he holds onto the countertop. “Tell me, then.”

January 1980 

Remus puts a hand on Peter’s shoulder and squeezes by way of hello, and Peter smiles tightly up at him.   
  
  
  
Sirius slips through the doorway from behind Remus, grabs Peter’s hand like they’re going to shake, but lets go a second later. It’s how they’ve done it for years, this unspoken, sensory greeting.   
  
  
  
It’s so brief that they all instantly turn from one another to look back at the long room, with the mismatched tables all shoved together down the length of it, and survey the damage.   
  
  
  
There used to be over thirty of them at these meetings, but they’re chipped away at each new day, and now as they sit down, not more than fifteen of them huddled around, the bare end of the table seems to grow even longer and shouts the absence of the dead down the centre of the room.   
  
  
  
They sit at the top near the doors, and it’s not a conscious decision, but as Remus settles in his seat and rests a hand on his wand, he thinks maybe it doesn’t have to be anymore.   
  
  
  
They’ve seen enough ambushes now to all bristle at the summoning of a new meeting like this; the prospect of all being crammed in a room together where one attack could take out the entire resistance like the snuffing of a flame is troubling.   
  
  
  
He isn’t sure why they do it anymore, all physically gather like this when they know it goes against every rule they set themselves, and then Dumbledore sends his Patronus instead of coming himself and everyone is doubly upset.   
  
  
  
They all bustle out afterwards grumbling, and the three of them are about to side-long apparate to Godric’s Hollow together when Marlene skips up behind them and taps Sirius on the shoulder.   
  
  
  
“I just wanted to catch you,” she says says firmly when Sirius turns around, “and say that I’m sorry.”   
  
  
  
Sirius clears his throat because she’s not to know, but it’s still a little soon.   
  
  
  
“About Regulus,” she confirms, and Remus and Peter make a very pointed attempt not to turn and look at Sirius, but peer at him from the corner of their eyes.   
  
  
  
Sirius nods, puts a hand on her arm and mumbles a ‘thanks’, but Marlene leans in and wraps her arms around him a big comforting hug.   
  
  
  
Remus feels a tug of jealousy that he instantly hates himself for and so tries to school his face into an open and genuine smile at her.  
  
  
  
He’s got the image of Sirius kissing her at the wedding seared in his mind, and he tries to think of all the reasons Sirius wouldn’t want to fall in love with Marlene McKinnon, but there bloody aren’t any, and his smile falters.   
  
  
  
“We’ll nip on ahead,” Remus says, but it also courteously says _we’ll leave you two to have this moment alone_ .   
  
  
  
He’s just turning away with Peter when Sirius tugs himself, not unkindly, from Marlene’s arms and grabs Remus’ forearm to stop him.   
  
  
  
“Hang on, I’m coming now,” he says, and then throws a grateful smile to Marlene. “See you on duty, Marls,” Sirius tells her, and then he’s brushing up against Remus as they leave.

  


 

***

 

July 1980 

A tense July culminates spectacularly with the birth of Harry James Potter.   
  
  
  
It’s barely a week later that Sirius flips his and Remus’ relationship on its head and a few days after that they come back to the flat buzzing with excitement because they have just held Harry for the first time each. Peter too, of course, and they all of them cried.   
  
  
  
James, having spent a fortnight alone getting used to the idea of his son being out in the world, manages to hold it in commendably well when he watches his best friends take turns raising Harry up in their arms for the first time.   
  
  
  
Sirius can’t stop smiling so much that his face begins to hurt and he has to take a break and go outside for a cigarette after his third hold.  
  
  
  
Remus goes out and finds him with his back against the wall, sniffling and blinking up at the stars with not a cigarette in sight.  
  
  
  
At this point Remus still barely knows that it’s the culmination of meeting James’ newborn son and the prospect of Remus going on another perilous solo mission that scares the shit out of Sirius, and makes his hands shake too much to even light his own cigarette.  
  
  
  
Sirius laughs, embarrassed, when Remus peers at him a little worriedly, and then Remus does pull out a ciggy to help calm him down again.   
  
  
  
Peter stares down at Harry in his arms with a watery smile and only starts weeping when he has to give him back, like he had saved it for later, so that Harry didn’t have to deal with it.   
  
  
  
Remus, last in line, insists on sitting down to take the baby, not confident in his ability, and receives Harry just as Lily trundles away to make them all brews.  
  
  
  
James goes to help her or fawn all over her, and Sirius goes along to laugh at them both in their domestic bliss, but Peter hovers near the window, marvelling and prodding at all of the nappies and paraphernalia required to look after a child.   
  
  
  
“You’re so wrinkly,” Remus whispers to Harry, his voice catching on the hard k and cracking.   
  
  
  
He looks up to see if anyone noticed, a self-conscious smile on his lips, and then lowers his eyes back to Harry. Utterly in in awe, he hardly notices himself begin to cry until his eyes blur and he doesn’t see Peter approach to ask him if he’s alright.   
  
  
  
Remus nods, swipes at his face and then the others are coming back and Harry is passed on again.   
  
  
  
So Remus has been thinking about children their entire journey home from James’, of course, and tears himself away from a very interesting daydream about future excursions as Uncle Moony to look back over his shoulder at Sirius.   
  
  
  
Remus is stood above Sirius on their front doorstep, his arms are full of gifts that Lily insisted they take from the house to relieve the crowding situation in their small cottage, and he can’t pass any back to Sirius because his arms are full too.   
  
  
  
Remus has just fumbled for the key in his pocket and accidentally flicked it out onto the ground, far below him, and in a fit of frustration summoned it back into his hand before cramming it into the lock and opening the door.   
  
  
  
Sirius swears under his breath, and only upon turning around does Remus realise that he has done anything of interest at all.   
  
  
  
Sirius has got this look in his eye that Remus knows he has seen before. It’s familiar, but still new and surprising to find it aimed directly at him.  
  
  
  
It looks like wonder and tenderness, and then behind that something hot and devouring.  
  
  
  
It lingers on the lines of Remus as he pushes into the flat and heads towards the main room, Sirius following and standing behind him as Remus dumps the gifts on the couch and then reaches over the kitchenette counter for an apple.   
  
  
  
He feels Sirius brush up behind him and so hands an apple back to him, before grabbing one for himself.   
  
  
  
It sits absently in Sirius’ hand as he smiles so warmly that Remus has to hide his mouth behind his own apple when he turns around and sees it.   
  
  
  
“You are _very_ sexy,” Sirius says in a low voice that somehow drains the mirth from Remus, makes him lower the apple.   
  
  
  
Unfortunately, he has taken a rather large bite of it already, and has to chew hurriedly and swallow to be able to respond.  
  
  
  
Sirius watches him patiently, a satisfied grin spreading slow and wide.   
  
  
  
“What’s brought this on?” Remus asks, unsure suddenly whether to be bothering with the apple at all.   
  
  
  
“I thought it was about time you knew,” Sirius says sincerely.   
  
  
  
“How I make you feel?” Remus asks coyly. Sirius’ eyes keep raking up and down his body, and it’s making him shift, not uncomfortably, under the gaze, so he holds onto the countertop. “Tell me, then.”   
  
  
  
“Crazy. Awestruck. Hot all over. _Achingly_ hard,” he adds on the end, and Remus grins, but it’s embarrassed and he can’t look Sirius  straight in the eye for a moment.   
  
  
  
Sirius jerks his head back toward the front door. “There’s nothing sexier than wandless magic, Moony.”   
  
  
  
“I’m pretty sure there’s loads of things sexier,” Remus mutters, and when he tries to take a step back subtly, Sirius moves with him, swaying almost into the spot Remus just vacated.   
  
  
  
“Yeah? Like what?” Sirius asks, and he’s up in Remus’ space, so close and watching with such obvious arousal that Remus thinks it's time to put his apple down now.   
  
  
  
He slips it onto the counter-top behind him and takes the one out of Sirius’ hands again, placing it down carefully beside his own.  
  
  
  
Then he turns back to Sirius with a fierce, dark look in his eyes and Sirius beams wickedly back at him.  


 

***

 

“Oh my God,” Sirius mutters, because he’s heard Remus say that before when things are unbelievable, and currently he has Remus on his back, writhing at the press of fingers in him, and he thinks there’s hardly anything less believable as this.   
  
  
  
He has spent practically a decade stuffing this particular desire into a small ball at the bottom of his stomach, and though it has often weighed heavy or fluttered nervously many times over the years he hasn’t dwelled on it in any real capacity. He’s always been good at that -- pushing something aside that he deems a waste of energy and attention for its inevitability to amount to nothing, and not letting it nag at him so much, except for on really dark days, or drunken nights.   
  
  
  
That’s how he has made it through school, through graduation, and then through almost two entire years living alone with Remus Lupin and not once entertained the thought that he could have been fucking the living daylights out of him on a daily basis for at least the majority of that time.   
  
  
  
“Oh my good God,” he says again, because Remus has his sweat-slicked hair tangled between his fingers where he presses a hand to his forehead, dark where normally it’s golden, and he is gasping so beautifully through this agonising period of preparation.   
  
  
  
He opens his eyes suddenly, and Sirius is startled by such open and honest longing, but he thinks saying ‘oh my god’ again is out of the question, so he just swears loudly, making Remus laugh helplessly.   
  
  
  
“You’re-- Remus, you’re too fucking good,” he practically sobs, because it’s kind of too much to handle, if he’s honest.  
  
  
  
He needs a few days to process that Remus is letting himself be touched like this, that he’s going to let Sirius do this, that he _wants_ Sirius to.     
  
  
  
It’s all rather heartbreaking, really, he thinks, because who knows how long Remus has wanted this as well, who knows how much time has been wasted, and he wants to work it out and then make up for it all.   
  
  
  
Remus reaches down and grasps his wrist, pulls his hand away and nods, almost desperately, for Sirius to get to it now.  
  
  
  
Sirius is a little frightened, he realises, as he leans down.  
  
  
  
Then, in a moment that feels like he reads Sirius’ mind, Remus pulls him down by the back of his neck, kisses him rather chastely for the circumstances they’re in, and says, “God, I’ve wanted this forever.”   
  
  
  
Sirius shakes his head. “You have no idea,” he laughs.

 

 

  
***

 

The next day they’re due at the Potters’, but Sirius wakes up next to Remus and he can’t keep the bone-deep joy and satisfaction from his face when he looks over at him.  
  
  
  
“Moony,” he whispers, then, “Remus” a little louder, earning a hand shoved in his face.   
  
  
  
“Shut up.”   
  
  
  
“We’re going to be late for Lily’s roast.”   
  
  
  
“I said, shh!” Remus grumbles, and shoves a few fingers into Sirius’ mouth for good measure, but this just makes Sirius laugh hysterically, and roll over Remus, and then they’re both wide awake.   
  
  
  
They are late for dinner in the end because Remus decides that such a rude awakening deserves recompense, and they pretend between them that Sirius sucking him off is a punishment, before washing and dressing hurriedly, then side-long apparating into James’ lounge just as they’re all tucking in to eat.   
  
  
  
“No, please, continue,” Sirius says as they pause with forks halfway to their mouths. “I’ve already eaten.”   
  
  
  
And Remus is mortified, even though they look confusedly at the pair of them, and do continue eating.  
  
  
  
Remus has to avoid Sirius’ eye-contact for the rest of the visit in case he gives the whole thing away, making James suspicious, but as usual he doesn’t quite pin the tail on the donkey, and they leave later that evening with nobody any the wiser.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how much is left in me for this timeline, kids! I think I'm running out of steam.


	19. Profit & Loss, 1981

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've decided that this is the last chapter. I'll probably write more Remus/Sirius in the future because they're my otp, but this is it for this, uh, timeline, I guess?
> 
> Thanks a bunch for reading and all the proper lovely comments, guys. Nice one.
> 
> Now pop on some [mood music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O5_4femmcw) and get going!

 

Remus comes stumbling out into shin-deep, muddy water, and has to shield his eyes as the sky flashes above him, briefly displaying the bleak marshland and swell of stark fells that stretch out around him as far as the eye can see.  
  
  
  
He misses it in that second with a hand over his eyes, but he's exhausted and he shouldn't really have apparated just now, and he sloshes back towards the bank and slumps against the reeds to catch his breath.  
  
  
  
It’s gone midnight, but Remus doesn’t know exactly what time it is. He hardly knows what day it is; he’s been travelling for perhaps a week now, on foot, without magic.  
  
  
  
This apparation was the first bit he’s done since he stuffed a bag with only half of his belongings and left the flat, red faced and heart broken, with Sirius standing against the hall wall like he was using all of his strength not to reach out and pull Remus back in.  
  
  
  
Even this small piece of magic feels like giving in - a 100 yard apparation to get to a better vantage point, and he only went and missed, overshot and landed in a swamp, and it’s just his fucking luck, Remus thinks now, trying to shove himself high enough up the bank so that his feet are out of the water, when not three feet behind him he could have been on solid ground.  
  
  
  
He huffs at himself and buries his wand at the bottom of his rucksack, and sure, it’s reckless, but he can’t bring himself to care any more.  
  
  
  
He had to walk it, to feel the distance being put between them, every inch separating himself from Sirius. From James and Lily and Harry, and from Peter.  
  
  
  
It tugs at him and weighs him down, but it’s a necessary burden to help make it feel like he has some control over the situation.  
  
  
  
It’s hopeless and comfortless, but it’s all he can manage.  
  
  
  
_Yes, Dumbledore, I’ll take that extended-period solo mission. I’ll take that unreasonably dangerous job that nobody else will touch._ _I will throw myself into this uncertain, reckless task and hope that it will absorb me until I can’t remember what even drove me here._  
  
  
  
It’s too dangerous for the floo network, or portkeys, and definitely for long-distance apparation, so he clutches a soggy map to his chest, in an attempt to keep it from getting any wetter.  
  
  
  
The wind whips at him, sends his hair flicking into his eyes so he has to squint into the night to make anything out, and to top it all off, now his socks are wet.  
  
  
  
The wind picks up a little and the reeds and cottongrass surrounding him begin to lash at his hands and legs, so he makes an attempt to clamber his way up onto firmer soil.  
  
  
  
He slips twice and grunts frustratedly before dragging himself up the small rise onto drier grasses, where he drops, exhausted, to the ground.  
  
  
  
He’s shivering and panting now, resting on his elbows and breathing in the rich swamp air as he eyes the skyline, and this time he catches it.  
  
  
  
It’s another flash across the sky, and he knows it isn’t the start of a thunderstorm because there are hardly any clouds in the sky for one, and anyway, he would have smelled it in the air already.  
  
  
  
For a moment Remus is certain he’s going to look up and see a Dark Mark.  
  
  
  
He turns over and leans up on one elbow to glance around, and _there_ \--  
  
  
  
He sees it’s not a Dark Mark and he huffs a small laugh, because why would there be one out in the middle of nowhere? What a rash, foolish thought.  
  
  
  
It is -- of all things -- fireworks.  
  
  
  
Remus sits up and he holds a hand in his hair to stop it from blowing into his eyes, and stares hard to find that there is a small farmhouse tucked in at the valley between two hills, maybe a mile or more to his left. And they are setting off fireworks.  
  
  
  
They are the only people Remus has heard of to celebrate Halloween at around 3am in the morning by setting off fireworks. Nobody he knows in the Muggle or Wizarding world observes this tradition, so it irks him that it’s happening here, now, in front of him.  
  
  
  
He can’t help but feel it like a sign, or an omen, but strangely it also makes him want to go and investigate.  
  
  
  
Perhaps that’s the Order training in him, but realistically it's probably just the reckless abandon he now possesses.  
  
  
  
Remus stands, begins planning a route across the land to get there, when there is another brightening of the sky. Remus stills, because he is certain that this time is did not come from the farm.  
  
  
  
He turns to look around frantically, and he spots it -- over on the right this time, further into the distance at the foot of a small mountain; more fireworks.  
  
  
  
There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach that he barely has time to process when he sees another set go up out of the corner of his eye, even farther out to his right, and suddenly he knows something is wrong.  
  
  
  
He feels a little stupid that he’s getting this impression from a handful of recreational fireworks, but it’s not normal, and it’s not a coincidence, and he can practically feel it in his bones that it means something _bad_.

 

***

 

Remus is proved wrong, first.  
  
  
  
It’s not bad because it’s the death of the Dark Lord, the end of the war, and a victory for all the half-bloods and Muggle-borns, and it means everything they fought for and lost was worth it.  
  
  
  
_Wasn’t it?_  
  
  
  
He’s nodding at the woman who welcomed him into the farmhouse from the cold, let him take of his shoes and socks and warm himself by the fire while she and her husband explained the meaning of all of the fireworks.  
  
  
  
They’d won, and it was all worth the fight.  
  
  
  
They ask him if he had lost anybody during the war and he tips his head down, thinks about the Prewetts,  Dearborn, Benjy, Marlene, all of the countless other friends, and it aches but she’s also right, there’s a gentle appeasement to it.  
  
  
  
“How?” he has to ask. He’ll get the hard facts from Dumbledore later, but he’s dying to know the rough story.  
  
  
  
So they tell him and it doesn’t make sense at first.  
  
  
  
The people in the story don’t have names, they’re just a young family with a baby who lived in Godric’s Hollow, but as it progresses Remus feels the fear creeping in.  
  
  
  
There are just some things in life that you _know_ , and he has to get up before they finish the story.  
  
  
  
He should have trusted his gut that this was something not entirely good, and now the bit that is going to tear him apart is coming and he can’t sit around to hear it.  
  
  
  
“I’m so s-sorry, I need to go,” Remus says hurriedly, tugging the blanket from around his shoulders and rolling it up to hand back. “Thank you so much, but I have to-- t-to go. I have to--”  
  
  
  
He takes too much from the pot of Floo powder on the mantel and almost knocks it over.  
  
  
  
The elderly couple watch him with a worried concern as he drops the powder into the hearth and barely looks back before stepping in.  
  
  
  
“Albus Dumbledore’s Office at Hogwarts,” he says, and he doesn’t stammer once even though he’s crying already.

 

 

  
***

 

 

July, 1981 

“There’s days,” Sirius begins, haltingly, looking over at Remus on the sofa to check that he’s being listened to, “when I can’t decide if James and Lily having Harry in the middle of this shit-storm is ridiculous or inspiring, and it sort of terrifies me.”  
  
  
  
“You’re terrified?” Remus asks curiously, because Sirius hardly ever opens up about his fears relating to James, though they’re often visible on the surface, and Remus would like to hear it from his own mouth.  
  
  
  
Sirius raises an eyebrow slightly, and Remus has to concede that it’s a bit of a stupid question.  
  
  
  
“It just-- it almost highlights the possibilities of tragedy, doesn’t it? We’re all just clamouring over ourselves to _do life_ ; having babies, falling in love…” Sirius flaps a hand as he speaks and it’s obvious that the gesture when he mentions babies is about the Potters, but then he flicks his hand toward Remus for the next bit and Remus blinks in surprise.  
  
  
  
“It’s like we know our breath is going to be cut short any moment so we’re all just gasping for air while we still can. And it is; it’s fucking terrifying, isn’t it?”  
  
  
  
Remus nods his agreement, but he feels himself becoming distracted by the word now echoing around his head.  
  
  
  
“I mean, we’re young. This is _youth_ , Moony, and we’re living like we’re on borrowed time. We’re trying to cram a lifetime’s worth of experience, and love, into every waking minute because we think we’re going to die? It’s so…”  
  
  
  
“Sad,” Remus finishes, solemnly and simply, because in the end all of the words in the world couldn’t embellish this feeling into something more than what it is at the core.  An overwhelming sadness. And then in an attempt to lift the mood a fraction, he says, “You’ve said ‘love’ twice now in the space of two minutes. Did you know that?”  
  
  
  
Sirius sighs and it’s obvious he’s done because he glances back down at the newspaper in his hands.  
  
  
  
“Do you love me?” Remus asks, intending it to sound casual and joking, but he somehow isn’t able to make the word ‘love’ not sound serious, and manages to change the mood with one brief question.  
  
  
  
Sirius flicks his eyes up from the newspaper, then lowers it slowly.  
  
  
  
“Obviously,” he says, also attempting casual and falling short.  
  
  
  
“Not ‘obviously’,” Remus replies, with a small shake of his head, and now he’s not making any attempt to make this seem light.  
  
  
  
“No,” Sirius confesses. “Not obviously. But irrefutably.”  
  
  
  
Remus ducks his chin and smiles to himself, and Sirius has to laugh softly because he’s dying to make a joke about long words making Remus weak at the knees, but he doesn’t want to ruin it.  
  
  
  
He drops the paper on the chair as he gets up, goes over to where Remus is on the couch, and lowers himself to his knees in front of him.  
  
  
  
He plants his hands on Remus’ thighs, and Remus reaches out to thread his fingers through Sirius’ hair.  
  
  
  
“Since school,” Sirius says quietly, a confession as he leans in, and Remus’ breath hitches.  
  
  
  
“You’re joking?”  
  
  
  
Sirius looks at him with a very self-conscious grin, and Remus huffs out a breath of incredulity.  
  
  
  
“Fucking hell, Sirius,” he breathes, tugging him in and kissing Sirius very firmly. Sirius cradles his face in his hands and smooths a thumb over the scars that run up into the corner of Remus’ mouth.  
  
  
  
It should be devastating, but it’s also very like them; to have been stumbling around one another obliviously for years on end, not daring to hope.  
  
  
  
“Don’t worry, Moony,” Sirius says soothingly, but his smile is small and grim. “We’ve got the rest of our lives.”

 

 


End file.
